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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27065347">but you see no ghosts in me at all</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue'>MaryPSue</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Stranger Things (TV 2016)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(very) loosely inspired by Pushing Daisies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Barbara "Barb" Holland Lives, Bob Newby Has Powers, Bob Newby Lives, Canonical Character Death, Comes Back Wrong, Cuddle Puddles, Domestic Fluff, Established Joyce Byers/Jim "Chief" Hopper, Everybody Lives, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff and Angst, Lovecraftian Monster(s), Major Character Undeath, Multi, Mutual Pining, Post-Season/Series 03, Tam Lin Elements, Very Minor Character Death, Will Byers Has Powers, and so in fine ST tradition gets his shit wrecked by an angry nerd, everyone is dating and only a few things hurt, i said what i said, lonnie byers is a bully, mentioned animal death, poor barb lives but still can't catch a break, there's a big ol' asterisk on all of those though</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:54:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>29,865</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27065347</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The dead returned to Hawkins on a stormy Thursday night.</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>...</p>
<p>The untimely dead of Hawkins, Indiana all seem to have been given a second chance at life. But, as Joyce Byers knows all too well, the world doesn't give impossible victories without taking something else away. When what seemed like a miracle at first starts to turn sour, Joyce and the men she loves are faced with an impossible choice - and discover that they all still have a lot to learn about love and each other.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joyce Byers/Jim "Chief" Hopper/Bob Newby</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>but you see no ghosts in me at all</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Gee, Joyce, how come this fanfiction lets you have <i>two</i> boyfriends.</p>
<p>This is nearly thirty thousand words of pure, unvarnished self-indulgence. Hopefully it'll be fun to read, because it definitely was to write. </p>
<p>Technically, this fic is set post-s3, but I've sort of glossed over a few high points I expect out of s4 to put things back more or less where they were at the end of s2. I know I said myself that I don't want a hard reset to status quo in the show but listen, status quo is good when you don't want to focus on How Does Everyone Deal With Change And Loss And Grief and instead want to focus on How Can I Make These Idiots Date. </p>
<p>I'm still only on season one in my rewatch, but I really wanted this out in October, so...here it is, minor transgressions against canon and all. I've done my best (and leaned heavily on the wiki), but a few odd misremembrances may still have slipped through here and there. I also went back and forth on whether Joyce, in an established relationship with Hopper, would call him by his first or last name, and finally settled on this. I tried and therefore no one can criticise me. </p>
<p>Title's from Lord Huron's 'Love Like Ghosts'. My playlist for this monster was Springsteen's 'Thunder Road', Bastille's 'Good Grief', a whole bunch of Lord Huron, and, for that good good eighties flavour, New Order's 'Bizarre Love Triangle'. </p>
<p>Happy spooky season, everyone.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The dead returned to Hawkins on a stormy Thursday night.</p>
<p>The teenage lifeguard locking up the pool gates got the shock of a lifetime when Heather Holloway stumbled out of the rain, wearing a red bathing suit and a look of haunted horror. Maxine Mayfield felt a jolt of that horror herself, dropping her fork into her mac and cheese as the snarl of a Camaro’s engine pulled into the driveway of her house. The waitress at Benny’s was halfway through asking Benny himself for his order before she realised who she was talking to. Mews the cat was discovered pawing at the back door of the Hendersons’, and launched herself into Claudia Henderson’s arms the moment she opened the door.</p>
<p>Nancy Wheeler got a phone call from a voice she’d thought she’d never hear again. Barbara Holland sounded spooked, asking if Nancy knew where her car had gone, and why her parents’ phone number wasn’t working, and could Nancy come get her. She didn’t want to have to walk through the woods alone.</p>
<p>And Bob Newby knocked on the Byers’ front door.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>Knock knock knock knock knock.</em>
</p>
<p>That was the second time. Joyce straightened up from the sink, flicking suds from her hands. Jim wasn’t coming by until his shift ended, which wouldn’t be for a few hours yet, and he wouldn’t knock anyway. He and Jonathan both had keys. She wasn’t expecting anyone else, and it was a bit late and a little too wild out for anyone to be going door-to-door. Maybe the swing had come off one of its chains again and the wind was blowing it against the outside wall.</p>
<p>But it sounded just like somebody hammering on the door.</p>
<p>Joyce tucked a lock of hair that had escaped her messy ponytail back behind one ear as she crossed the kitchen and went to the front door. A part of her couldn’t believe she was back in this house, that the kids were all sound and safe in the rooms down the hall, that she was expecting Jim to come by later, like all of last year had been nothing but a terrible dream. Like nothing had ever changed.</p>
<p>Like she’d never had to think both the men she loved were dead.</p>
<p>She was unimaginably lucky. Joyce knew that probably better than anyone. That she’d got to have Will back was a small miracle in itself. Trying to find Jim, to bring him home too, after that had felt almost greedy. Like she’d already asked too much, and somehow, impossibly, gotten it. Like asking for more, after that, was just tempting the universe to take something else away. Take some<em>one</em> else away.</p>
<p>She felt a little like she was living on a tightrope, some days. Like it was all just <em>too</em> good. Like it couldn’t possibly stay that way, and she was just waiting for the moment she lost her balance and everything fell.</p>
<p>There was a shadow in the square of bubbled glass in the door. It <em>was</em> someone knocking. Joyce smoothed down the front of her t-shirt, fixing a polite smile onto her face as she swung open the front door.</p>
<p>“Joyce,” Bob breathed, looking at her face like a man in the desert staring at an oasis, desperate with relief and hope and trying to tell if it was a mirage.</p>
<p>Joyce slammed the door in his face.</p>
<p>In the moment of stunned silence that followed, she slammed the lock and shot the chain home, then took two big steps back from the door, watching it warily, feeling her heart jackhammer in her chest. Half-hoping that the knocking wouldn’t start again. Half-hoping it would.</p>
<p>“Joyce?” that so-familiar voice called, from the other side of the door.</p>
<p>“Go away!” Joyce wanted to take another step backwards, but her feet were frozen in place. “You – you’re dead! I watched those – <em>things</em> kill you!”</p>
<p>There was another moment of silence. And then, a quiet, “I thought so.”</p>
<p>“You <em>thought</em> so? You <em>thought</em> you were <em>dead!?</em>”</p>
<p>A pause. “Yes?”</p>
<p>Joyce stared at the door. She could too easily picture Bob, on the other side, staring back.</p>
<p>“People don’t come back from the dead,” she said.</p>
<p>“I know.” There was another, terrible silence. “Joyce, I – I can’t explain it. I don’t know what’s going on. I thought -” Joyce felt a fist tighten around her heart at the soft half-laugh that followed, so familiar, so – so <em>Bob</em>. “I kind of hoped <em>you</em> might have some idea. After all, after what happened with Will, and those tunnels, and all the monsters…”</p>
<p>Joyce took a tentative step towards the door.</p>
<p>“You’re my expert on all things weird,” Bob went on, raising his voice a little over a howling gust of wind. “And I couldn’t think of anybody I wanted to see more. Can I – would you please open the door?”</p>
<p>“How -” Joyce shut her eyes, shaking her head like it could settle out her whirling thoughts into some kind of pattern. “How do I know it’s really you?”</p>
<p>In the silence that followed, Joyce traced the pattern of woodgrain in the door. She’d all but memorised it in the last few endless minutes since she’d shut it in Bob’s face.</p>
<p>“I guess you don’t,” Bob’s voice said, at last. “I guess <em>I</em> don’t, either. I could tell you where we went for our first date, what movie we saw, where your birthmark is – but all any of that proves is that, if there’s some kind of spy in <em>my</em> head, it hasn’t got too far yet.”</p>
<p>He was quiet for another moment, before asking, in the solemn tones of someone who didn’t know if he really wanted to know the answer, “Is Will okay? Did everybody else make it out alright?”</p>
<p>Joyce took another step forward. She noticed, with a kind of detached interest, that her hands were shaking as she reached up to unchain the door.</p>
<p>Before she could stop herself, before she could think too hard about the children asleep in the house behind her and what could be waiting on the doorstep and what she was doing, she turned the lock and threw the door open.</p>
<p>This time, the look Bob fixed on her was nothing but pure, astonished happiness. The smile that spread across his face was a punch to Joyce’s gut, knocking a long breath out of her. She hadn’t realised until now just how much she’d missed that smile.</p>
<p>She only hesitated a moment before throwing herself into his arms.</p>
<p>“Will’s fine,” she whispered, as Bob gently and almost reverently reached up to wrap his arms around her, and then squeezed so hard that she gasped, like he was trying to reassure himself that she was solid. Joyce knew she was doing the same. “Everyone’s all right. Every<em>thing</em> is all right.”</p>
<p>She was astonished to realise she meant it.</p>
<p>“Oh,” Bob said, into her ear. Joyce could hear the smile in it. “Well. That’s good.”</p>
<p>Joyce shut her eyes, and buried her face in his shoulder.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It was probably the weirdest shift Jim had worked since Will Byers first disappeared.</p>
<p>It didn’t start out weird. Not any more weird than it usually was, anyway. Being back to deputy <em>was </em>weird, and working for <em>his</em> former deputy was even weirder, but he’d officially died and, well, <em>somebody</em> had had to take over as chief. But there was at least one nice thing about it, and that was that most of the job was almost blissfully boring. After the last few years – hell, after his <em>life</em> – Jim would be lying if he said he hadn’t come to appreciate boredom. Boredom usually meant nobody and nothing was dying or trying to kill him. Or both.</p>
<p>He’d been – an hour, maybe two, away from clocking out, heading back to the Byers clan’s place, putting his feet up on the coffee table, and doing absolutely nothing for the rest of the night when the calls started coming in. And that was when things got weird.</p>
<p>Dale and Henry, both missing for more than three years and generally presumed dead of a hunting accident (or, if you were Jim, a monster encounter), had just walked out of the woods and sat down at the dinner table in the house they’d left years earlier, like no time had passed. Jim hadn’t been sure what to do about it when Bev Mooney had called, nearly in hysterics. He knew how to deal with missing persons. He was a little rustier on found ones.</p>
<p>He’d barely started getting the paperwork sorted out to close both missing persons cases when a call came in about an intruder. He’d gone tearing out, lights and siren blazing – only to find Tom Holloway having a screaming fight with Alan Cartwright in the middle of what had once been Tom’s house. <em>Once</em>. Before Tom had <em>died</em>.</p>
<p>Tom had flatly refused to take ‘people get to sell your real estate when you’re dead’ for an answer, arguing loudly and strenuously that, as he was obviously not currently dead, he couldn’t have <em>been</em> dead, so it was still his house. Jim had managed to take the wind out of his sails some by asking where he’d been since July 1985, then, and quietly ushering him off the property while he was still processing that almost an entire year had passed without his noticing.</p>
<p>Jim didn’t try to argue too hard against Tom’s logic. After all, the guy had a point.</p>
<p>It was <em>possible</em>, maybe, that the kids had been wrong. That it hadn’t actually been Tom – or the melty zombie version of Tom – that Jonathan had beat to death with a fire extinguisher or whatever the story had been. Adrenaline ran high, in life-and-death situations. Sometimes you saw what you wanted to see. Sure, it was still weird for the guy to have been gone for a full year without so much as a whisper, but then, that was pretty much what Jim himself had done, so he didn’t feel too inclined to start pointing fingers.</p>
<p>Jim had been halfway to the hospital with Tom still muttering, “It doesn’t make any <em>sense!</em>” in the backseat when Callahan radioed about a noise complaint that had turned out to be a domestic and could he get his behind over to an address he wished he didn’t recognise. He’d dropped Tom off at the hospital’s emergency entrance, noticing that there seemed to be more people milling around in hospital gowns and more excitement among the nurses than usual, and then took off for the Mayfield kid’s house.</p>
<p>Luckily, she wasn’t the one involved. She and her mother were hanging back, looking horrified, while out on the front lawn, her stepdad was trading blows with –</p>
<p>And that was where the night officially went from ‘weird’ to ‘Upside-Down weird’. Because Jim knew for a fact that Billy Hargrove was dead.</p>
<p>But that didn’t seem to be stopping him from planting his fist square in his father’s face.</p>
<p>“That – <em>maniac</em> just went for me!” Neil protested, as Jim pressed the top of his head down into the backseat of Callahan’s car. “And <em>you</em>. Your police department told me my son died when the mall burned down. Does he look dead to you?”</p>
<p>“Nope,” Jim said, looking back at his own squad car and its passenger. And then at the Mayfield kid, standing wide-eyed but grimly serious on the house’s front steps with her worried mother’s hands on her shoulders, bathed in the flash of red and blue light.</p>
<p>“So how do you explain that? Do you think he came <em>back</em> from the dead?”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Jim said. “Seems like a lot of that going around lately.”</p>
<p>He slammed the car door on Neil’s protests, giving the roof a thump to let Callahan know he could take it away.</p>
<p>And that was when he’d got radioed about the break-in at the middle school.</p>
<p>By the time Jim got out there, anyone who’d been in the building was long gone. But based on the descriptions Ellen Palmer had given of the intruders when she’d called it in, he had a nasty suspicion he knew exactly who’d turned up at the school, and why. After all, there’d only ever been one mass fatality at Hawkins Middle.</p>
<p>And it had all been agents looking for the kid he’d left alone with Joyce.</p>
<p>The other nice thing about not being chief anymore was that now, he could pass the buck. Jim radioed back to Flo to let her know that he was going off shift and that he strongly advised the chief to let both the Hargroves cool their heels – in separate cells – until morning. And then he’d turned on the lights, <em>and</em> the siren, and broken the speed limit and at least three road safety laws to get him to the Byers’ house in record time.</p>
<p>He killed the lights and the siren as he turned onto the road that the damn kids had got even him calling ‘Mirkwood’. He didn’t want to tip anybody off that he was coming. From the flickers of light he caught through the trees from the direction of the old lab, he’d made the right call. He could all too easily picture the place full of recently-resurrected white coats and gun-toting grunts. So close to where what little family Jim had were sitting unsuspecting and undefended. Too close.</p>
<p>Joyce started up from the couch when he burst through the door. “Jim! What -”</p>
<p>“Where are the kids?”</p>
<p>“In Will’s room, they were both asleep the last time I -” Joyce hurried along the hall behind Jim as he stalked toward the room at the end, gun drawn and pointed at the floor. “What’s going on?”</p>
<p>“Not sure yet.” Jim raised a finger to his lips, signalling for quiet, as he drew up on the closed door. Joyce nodded, peering nervously around his shoulder as he carefully inched the door open.</p>
<p>The room was full of sleepy silence. The mop of Will Byers’ dark hair was just visible above the little ball of blankets on the top bunk. On the bottom bunk, the covers rustled, and El’s bright eyes peered up, full of silent questions.</p>
<p>Jim could feel himself sag with relief.</p>
<p>“Nah, it’s all right, kid,” he whispered, holstering his pistol and easing the door shut as he stepped back through it. “Go back to sleep.”</p>
<p>The latch clicked softly into place, and Jim leaned back against the door, letting his head fall back against the wood veneer and staring up at the ceiling. The adrenaline was bleeding slowly out of him, leaving him cold, his limbs leaden.</p>
<p>“Looks like people are coming back,” he said, heavily. “From the dead.”</p>
<p>There was something like guilt in Joyce’s voice, and Jim looked down to see her wringing the overlong sleeve of the flannel shirt she was wearing in both hands, the bright smile she wore just a little too bright. “I…know?”</p>
<p>Jim gave her a long look. The word fell out of his mouth like it weighed a thousand tons. “<em>What.</em>”</p>
<p>Joyce’s smile got brighter and more sheepish as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. And behind her, the bathroom door swung open to reveal – a surprised-looking Bob Newby.</p>
<p>“Bob,” Jim sighed. He really, really should’ve expected this.</p>
<p>Bob’s smile was a nervous flicker. “Hi, Jim.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Jim spent most of the next few days sorting out accommodations for the returned who didn’t have homes to go back to, dealing with paperwork, and generally avoiding Joyce’s house. She wasn’t sure if it was because Bob unsettled him, if he was trying to track down whatever had brought everyone back, or if he was just sulking. But he didn’t scoop El up and off to his secret hideout in the woods, so Joyce figured he’d be back once he’d worked out whatever it was he was wrestling with.</p>
<p>She was starting to understand that that was how he worked. Trying to make him talk about it before he was ready just ended in explosions. Sometimes Jim just needed time with his thoughts, to get his own head straight, before he opened his mouth.</p>
<p>Telling those times from the times he needed someone to pull him out of a spiral of misery and self-pity was, unfortunately, an art Joyce was still struggling to master.</p>
<p>This time, thankfully, she seemed to have made the right call letting him have his space. Saturday evening, there was a crunch of gravel and a flare of headlights as Joyce was sitting out on the porch having a smoke, and his truck swung into the drive and parked.</p>
<p>Joyce shuffled over on the swing, making room for Jim, but he just shook his head and went rummaging in his pockets, eventually coming up with a battered pack of Camels. He stuck one between his teeth and then went searching for a lighter. Joyce took pity on him and offered hers, and he leaned in to let her light his cigarette, taking a long, deep drag and letting out a huge breath of smoke before he said a single word.</p>
<p>“We’re gonna have to <em>talk</em> about this, aren’t we.”</p>
<p>Joyce nodded, tapping ash from the end of her own cigarette. She shot Jim a look when he made a disgusted noise, and he gave her a halfway-apologetic shrug, hunching his shoulders forward and squinting at the clothesline.</p>
<p>“Great.” It was drawn-out and sarcastic. “That’s great. Let’s get it over with.”</p>
<p>“I’m not trying to <em>torture</em> you,” Joyce sighed. “I just want – to clear the air. Make sure we’re okay.” She rocked her feet against the cracked concrete of the porch, from her heels onto her toes and back again, making the swing creak back and forth. “We <em>are</em> okay, aren’t we?”</p>
<p>Jim just huffed. “You left the kid with him, huh?”</p>
<p>Joyce waved her cigarette, by way of explanation. “Bob can’t stand the smoke, you know that. And – he’s so good with those kids. I think even El likes him. Although she’s trying hard not to let on.” She couldn’t help a smile. Maybe it’d be easier for <em>her</em> if El wasn’t so determined to make Bob’s life difficult, but – it was kind of sweet to see that she was just as loyal to Jim as he’d obviously become to her.</p>
<p>“Great. So everybody’s getting along. Guess I didn’t need to bother stopping by after all.”</p>
<p>So he <em>had</em> been sulking. “You know – Jim, you <em>know</em> this doesn’t mean I’m leaving you. Right?” Joyce glanced back over her shoulder at the house, thinking of El again. “Nobody’s taking your place.”</p>
<p>“You picked him. He died. You picked me. He’s back.” Jim’s shrug was tight, deliberately casual, but Joyce could see how tense his shoulders were, the way he didn’t meet her eyes when he flashed a bitter smile in her direction. “Don’t have to be a detective to put two and two together.”</p>
<p>“Oh, come on, that’s not fair.”</p>
<p>“He’s living in your <em>house</em>, Joyce!”</p>
<p>“So are <em>you</em>, half the time! So is your <em>kid</em>! Remember what a time you had finding a place to stay when <em>you</em> came back from the dead?” Joyce regretted it as soon as she said it. She’d only meant to remind him about how he’d let the lease on the trailer lapse while he and El were living out in the cabin, leaving him with nowhere else to go when he’d come back and it still had a gaping hole in the roof. But she knew that whole year was still a sore subject.</p>
<p>And judging by the way Jim drew in on himself, the spot Joyce had hit was still tender. “Yeah, well, I’m almost done with the work on the cabin. And then we’ll be out of your hair.”</p>
<p>Joyce bit off a sharp retort, pushing the swing back and forth with her feet. She <em>knew</em> by now that Jim picked fights when he was hurt, when he was scared, when he didn’t want her to see him looking anything but big and tough and mean and capable of taking care of himself. He didn’t like being vulnerable – liked it even less, since they’d got him back.</p>
<p>But that didn’t mean it was fair to make her put up with this…this insecure <em>bullshit</em>, with him putting it all on her to reassure him while he read the worst into everything she said. Joyce had made more than enough excuses for the man she loved when she’d been with Lonnie. And look how that had turned out.</p>
<p>“Bob’s staying with me because he doesn’t have anywhere else to go,” she said, with careful, deliberate patience. “You know that, you agreed to that, and if you had a problem with it, you should have <em>told me</em>.”</p>
<p>“He’s a grown man. You can’t tell me he doesn’t have <em>anywhere</em> else to go.”</p>
<p>“Officially, he’s still dead! I know you know what a nightmare that is to sort out, I’m sure that’s all you’ve been dealing with these past couple of days.” Joyce hoped that what she hadn’t said – that she understood, that she wasn’t upset that Jim had stayed away – was clear enough from that. Unfortunately, if she came right out and said that while he was like this, it was even odds that he’d take it to heart or that he’d think she was mocking him and clam up even more. “And he doesn’t want to tell his parents he’s back just yet. Doesn’t want to make any big decisions until we know more about what this is, that it isn’t just going to reverse itself all of a sudden. I think that’s the right idea.”</p>
<p>Jim glared at the light out in the yard like he was trying to uproot it with his mind. “So you’re just going to string me along until you know whether he’s going to drop dead on you again. That it?”</p>
<p>Joyce sucked in a breath, choking on a laugh. Of course. Of <em>course</em> she could count on Jim Hopper to pick the worst possible interpretation. His talent for thinking the worst was only rivalled by her own.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, though, this time he sort of had a point.</p>
<p>For one stomach-turning second, Joyce imagined she could feel the tightrope wobbling under her feet. Could feel herself swaying side-to-side trying to keep her balance, trying not to overcorrect too far to one side to avoid falling off the other.</p>
<p>“You know it’s not,” she said. “I – I really hope you know it’s not.”</p>
<p>For a moment, neither of them said a word. Joyce took another few miserable puffs on her cigarette.</p>
<p>“Look,” Jim said, at last, his voice unexpectedly soft. He cast a sideways glace over his shoulder at her, and Joyce wondered, suddenly and unexpectedly, if he could feel it all unbalancing too. His self-deprecating chuckle made her heart clench painfully. “Listen to me. I sound like a jealous high school kid.”</p>
<p>He turned back to stare out at the gravel drive, resting his hands on his belt and frowning like he was thinking hard. Joyce followed his gaze, thinking briefly of the moving van that had stood out there, the two times she’d come to this house with little more than a grim determination to make things work. To keep her family together.</p>
<p>“I just wanna know where we stand,” Jim said, after another long moment of silence.</p>
<p>Joyce shook her head, taking one final drag on her cigarette before stubbing it out against the arm of the swing. She’d loved that swing from the moment she saw it. It had looked so romantic, all carved wood and white paint, hanging there on the porch.</p>
<p>She couldn’t remember if she’d ever actually used it for its intended purpose before tonight.</p>
<p>“You -” Joyce took a deep breath, and tried again. She just wanted to reach out, take Jim by the hand, kiss him back to his senses, reassure them both with a touch that this was still solid and serious and real – but he still wasn’t looking at her, and Joyce still had that unbalancing feeling that, right now, it might do more harm than good. “I – we make a good team. I don’t want to lose you.”</p>
<p>Jim huffed a breath that was almost a laugh. “So you’re gonna let me down easy.”</p>
<p>“No, no, that’s not what I -” Joyce shook her head. “Remember – when Will first went missing? When they pulled that – that fake body out of the quarry?” She still felt a little sting of panic at the thought. The coroner drawing back the white sheet to reveal that little blue face, lying alone on that cold metal table…</p>
<p>Even knowing it wasn’t Will, even <em>knowing</em> that he was still out there somewhere, somehow – that sight had struck Joyce, right down to her core.</p>
<p>Jim gave a short, jerky nod, still not looking at her. Joyce wondered, briefly, guiltily, whether he was thinking of another little blue face. It seemed like the only folks who’d been brought back were people whose death had had to do with the Upside Down in some way, and it struck Joyce for the first time that that might be part of why he’d stayed away this long. That it might be hard, to see her and Bob getting a second chance, when…</p>
<p>“You were…so kind, to me,” she said, squeezing her own knees with the clawed fingers of both hands, gently pushing the swing back and forth with her feet. The chain creaked softly, rhythmically, as it swung. “Everyone else thought I was losing it. Wanted me to shut up and go away. But you – you <em>cared</em>. You <em>listened</em>. Even when it sounded…”</p>
<p>“Crazy?” Jim offered, with a quick flicker of a smile. Joyce shook her head, smiling back.</p>
<p>“It mattered to you to make sure I knew what had happened to my son. That <em>I</em> was okay. You didn’t have to. You could have – blown me off. When the body turned up, you could have closed the case. It wasn’t your job to keep digging, to go chasing ghosts halfway across Indiana.” She paused. “But if you hadn’t, I don’t know if I ever would’ve seen Will again.”</p>
<p>Jim looked a little like he’d like to crawl out of his own skin to get away from this conversation. But all he said was a mumbled, “Thanks.”</p>
<p>The swing swung slowly to a stop, and Joyce put her feet back flat on the porch. “Look, I know what you do. Try to act like nothing matters, like nothing can hurt you, like everything bounces off. But – that’s not why I love you.” She pushed herself to her feet, and had to take a moment to reorient herself after the swinging back and forth, to steady her balance on the solid ground. “I know you care. So stop – just stop trying to be Mr. Tough Guy for once, and let somebody care about <em>you</em> for a change. Okay?”</p>
<p>Jim didn’t say anything, just looked at Joyce like <em>she</em> was the one who’d come back from the dead.</p>
<p>“What?” Joyce asked, when the seconds had stretched out to nearly a minute without him saying a word.</p>
<p>Jim mumbled something, turning his face away.</p>
<p>“Jim, honey, I didn’t catch -”</p>
<p>“You said ‘<em>love</em>’.”</p>
<p>Joyce caught her breath.</p>
<p>“<em>Now</em> you sound like a high school kid,” she managed, after a moment. “Yes. Yes I did. I’ll say it again if you want me to.”</p>
<p>Jim’s smile looked like it hurt. “You know I do. Every day. Every time you open your mouth.” The smile faded, leaving just the hurt. “But only if you mean it. And I don’t think you can. Not with <em>him</em> around. Not the way you look at him.”</p>
<p>“Jim,” Joyce started, but he bulled ahead, not looking at her again.</p>
<p>“Nothing against the guy. He’s a good guy. Saved my ass, when I was stuck in those tunnels. Saved <em>all</em> our asses back at the lab. He’s good with your boys. And – he’s good for you.”</p>
<p>“Better than you?”</p>
<p>“Oh, nobody’s better than me. But -” Jim took a long drag on his cigarette, the ember flaring and casting a ruddy glow over a face that seemed suddenly sad. “You smile more when you’re with him. He makes you happy. You should be happy.”</p>
<p>“Jim -”</p>
<p>“I <em>want</em> you to be happy, Joyce. Whether that’s with me, or – somebody else.”</p>
<p>“You make me happy. And don’t you think I might want you to be happy, too?”</p>
<p>Jim didn’t say anything to that. He just flicked what was left of his cigarette down onto the concrete, grinding it out with his heel. Then he turned around and slouched up to the front door, swinging it open to call down the hall. “El? C’mon, kid, time to go.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You and Jim seem good together,” Bob said, Sunday night after dinner, when they were both clearing up in the kitchen. He’d cooked. Spaghetti and meatballs. Joyce had almost forgotten the kind of wizardry he could work with the humble tomato.</p>
<p>She paused in the middle of scrubbing cooked-on tomato sauce from the rim of a pot to look up at Bob. He didn’t seem upset, Joyce decided, after a moment. Just – a little wistful.</p>
<p>“I – I think we are,” she admitted.</p>
<p>Bob nodded to himself. “Can’t say I’m too surprised that you two got together. I always kind of figured you had some unfinished business with each other.” His voice was light, unconcerned. But maybe, Joyce thought, a little too deliberately so. “And…I know you were never really sure about me.”</p>
<p>He cut Joyce’s sputtering short with a sad smile. “Joyce. It’s all right. If you didn’t feel it, you didn’t feel it.”</p>
<p>“That’s not – that wasn’t what -” Joyce shook her head. “All right. Fine. No, I wasn’t sure. <em>Not</em>,” she said, interrupting Bob before he could say anything else, “until the tunnels. I didn’t know if you could handle…well.” She tried to force a smile. “You’ve seen my life.”</p>
<p>Bob chuckled ruefully, turning his face away and busying himself drying dishes. “Well, you were right. Turns out I couldn’t handle it.”</p>
<p>Joyce couldn’t stand it, couldn’t keep trying to pretend it was – funny, or that it was nothing important, or – whatever it was that would let her smile and laugh about it. “That’s not true. What happened to you wasn’t fair. And don’t you ever, <em>ever</em> try to say it was – it was your fault, or – or that you failed, or weren’t good enough, because it’s just not true. We wouldn’t be here now without you. You walked straight into a horror movie for us and didn’t even flinch.” When Bob looked up, his attempt at a self-deprecating smile melted under her gaze. “I could love you just for that, even if you weren’t already…everything you are.”</p>
<p>She seemed to have struck him speechless. He just looked at her for a long moment, like he was trying to commit her face to memory.</p>
<p>Finally, his face cracked in a grin, though it still seemed a little softer than the brittle-edged smile he’d worn just minutes before. “I hope Jim knows how lucky he is.”</p>
<p>“I just – are you <em>sure</em> you’re all right with us -”</p>
<p>“Joyce.” Bob’s voice was gentle, but firm. His eyes searched her face, for what, Joyce didn’t know. “I wouldn’t have wanted you to be alone. If you had to pick somebody who wasn’t me, I’m at least happy it’s a good guy like Jim. He knows what you’ve been through, he’ll look out for you.”</p>
<p>“I just don’t want you to think -” Joyce started, turning back to the pot. She scrubbed in silence for a moment while she tried to work out what it was she didn’t want Bob to think. “That I forgot about you? That you didn’t matter enough for me to not start dating somebody else? That – that Jim and I – I mean, we were pretty close before you – died, but we never -”</p>
<p>“Joyce.” Bob’s hand closed over her wrist, warm and solid and <em>real</em>, stopping her furious scrubbing. Joyce looked up into a smile that only seemed a little sad around the edges. “I <em>died</em>. You don’t have to justify yourself to me.”</p>
<p>“I’m so -”</p>
<p>“And don’t you dare say you’re sorry.” Joyce was surprised to see that Bob’s smile reached his eyes. “That year I had with you was one of the best years of my life.”</p>
<p>“But,” Joyce said, before she could think better of it. “You should’ve had more of them. <em>We</em> should’ve had more of them.”</p>
<p>“Well…it seems a little selfish to come back from the dead and then spend all your time wishing you hadn’t died in the first place.” Bob shrugged, gesturing with the dish towel. “I would’ve liked to have more time with you. But I don’t regret anything.”</p>
<p>“Nothing?” Joyce asked. And then, because she couldn’t resist, “Not even…stopping in the lobby?”</p>
<p>Bob made a face. “All right, <em>that</em> I might regret.” He really did have one of the nicest smiles, warm and bright and easy, like sunlight. “But it did mean the last thing I ever saw was your face.”</p>
<p>Joyce couldn’t think of a single thing to say to that. In the end, she settled on, “Bob Newby, you hopeless romantic,” and flicked some suds at him.</p>
<p>Bob squawked in surprise, and then pulled the dish towel off his shoulder, snapping it in the air at Joyce. She shrieked, jumping back with a laugh. “Oh, is that a challenge?”</p>
<p>Some minutes later, both half-soaked and covered in soap suds, they called a ceasefire. Joyce turned back to the pots and pans feeling lighter than she had in – months. She’d meant every word she’d said to Jim. He <em>did</em> make her happy. But – they’d spent so long trying to save the world and their kids and each other. And between the two of them, they had enough issues to be one of Will’s comic books. There was always something serious looming over or between them. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d just had <em>fun</em> together.</p>
<p>Maybe, Joyce thought, Jim needed a good laugh as much as she had.</p>
<p>“I missed this,” she admitted, to the pot she was still trying to scrub clean, before daring to look up. “I missed <em>you</em>.”</p>
<p>Bob’s smile was wry. “I’d like to say I missed you too, but I don’t really remember much between the lobby and the woods out here.”</p>
<p>Joyce plunged both her hands back into the soapy water, to the wrists. It was starting to go cold. “Does it feel like – has any time passed for you at all?”</p>
<p>She looked up when Bob didn’t answer. He was staring blankly at the window, but she didn’t think he was really seeing the yard outside.</p>
<p>“Bob,” Joyce pressed. “Are you – do you remember – I mean, you just said you didn’t, but -”</p>
<p>“I don’t…know,” Bob said, at last, seeming to unfreeze. “There was – <em>something</em>, but it’s not – it didn’t make much sense. It definitely didn’t feel like more than a year. And I don’t know if that was, well, <em>death</em>, or dying, or coming back…”</p>
<p>He gave his head a shake. “You know, talking about being dead is probably the weirdest thing I’ve ever done.”</p>
<p>“Tell me about it,” Will called from the living room where he was sitting on the carpet, bent over the coffee table and his sketchbook. Jonathan let out a stifled snort of laughter from the couch.</p>
<p>Bob managed a chuckle of his own, but it sounded forced.</p>
<p>Joyce met his eyes for a moment, and then leaned forward into him, wrapping her arms around the solid bulk of him and clinging on tight. She shut her eyes, savouring the feeling of his living warmth against her, listening to the steady pump of his heart.</p>
<p>“I died,” Bob said, quietly, sounding amazed. Joyce held him a little tighter. “I <em>died</em>.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. You did.”</p>
<p>Joyce looked up, and took a step back when she saw Jim pushing the back door the rest of the way open. She hoped with all her heart that the frown he turned in her and Bob’s direction was thoughtful rather than angry.</p>
<p>El followed close on his heels, slipping past him and into the living room as he hung up his hat on the hook by the door. She crashed down onto the carpet across the coffee table from Will, peering over his sketchbook to see what he was drawing.</p>
<p>“So did everybody else,” Jim went on, stomping his boots off before he took another step into the house. It had taken Joyce months to drill that into him, and she couldn’t help a little glow of satisfaction about it. “We had a real enlightening afternoon with a blindfold and a radio.”</p>
<p>“Like something to eat?” Bob asked, carefully casual, and Joyce felt her heart squeeze in her chest. He was doing this for her, she knew, trying to get along, and for a moment she was overcome all over again with a wave of warmth. “We had dinner already, but there’s lots of food -”</p>
<p>“Nah, I can’t stay,” Jim interrupted. He met the glare Joyce levelled at him with a look that could have fallen to either ‘wounded’ or ‘offended’. “<em>What</em>, I really can’t! The wunderkind said -” He checked himself in the middle of the sentence. “I’ve still got a couple things to check out. That’s all.”</p>
<p>“Ohh ho ho, no you don’t,” Joyce was saying, almost before he’d finished the sentence. “You are <em>not</em> going out there alone to ‘check out’ some – some Upside Down thing without even telling us what it is! Do you even remember what happened last time?”</p>
<p>“ ‘course,” Jim said, but he wouldn’t look her in the eye. “Look, Joyce -”</p>
<p>“What, you think because the dead are rising, you can’t get yourself killed? Don’t be an idiot, Hopper.” Joyce couldn’t stop her voice from cracking, just a little. “I thought I’d lost you once, and that was <em>more</em> than enough.”</p>
<p>She seemed to have struck him speechless. He glanced up, over her shoulder, and Joyce didn’t have to look back to know he’d locked eyes with Bob.</p>
<p>“I…don’t want any of you getting hurt, either,” Jim mumbled, after a moment, turning his face away towards the living room and raising a hand to scrub at his scruff so that the words almost got lost. “I can handle -”</p>
<p>“What, and I can’t? Have you just forgotten the last three years?” Joyce folded her arms over her chest and stared. Jim fidgeted under it for a long moment before he capitulated with a sigh.</p>
<p>“Fine. Fine. You should at least know what we know.” He stepped forward into the kitchen, pulling out a chair, but stopped short when Bob cleared his throat. “<em>What</em>.”</p>
<p>“Nothing, I just -” Bob glanced down at Joyce, who shrugged. She wasn’t a mind reader. “Is this something the kids should know about, too?”</p>
<p>For a second, Joyce thought Jim was about to pick a fight. But then he let out a long sigh, shoulders slumping, though the flat, angry expression he wore didn’t change. “Sure. Why not.”</p>
<p>He started toward the living room, but stopped, looking back over his shoulder. “Just to put the cherry on top, which one of you’s gonna make my day and tell me that little Wheeler asshole’s here too?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>El wanted spaghetti, so Jim ended up getting talked into eating a plateful too, sucking down noodles in between answering questions. Given that most of the answers were either ‘no idea’ or ‘that’s what I wanna find out’, it wasn’t such a bad setup. And whatever was in that spaghetti sauce, it sure tasted one hell of a lot better than the TV dinners he would’ve been reheating for himself and the kid.</p>
<p>The people who’d come back had all definitely been dead. Maybe still sort of were. El had called them ‘here and gone’, which, who knew what the hell <em>that</em> meant. Kid had a much bigger vocabulary these days than she’d had when they’d been hiding out, but she was still choosy about when and how she used it. And she had a habit of putting words together like nobody Jim had ever met. Half the time it was poetry, half the time it was total nonsense. Like living with a tiny, psychic Dr. Seuss.</p>
<p>In addition to the living dead wandering around, there was also, big fuckin’ surprise, something wrong at the lab. Something <em>rotten</em>, El had said. She hadn’t been able to tell him much more, just that it wasn’t another Gate. That it wasn’t anything she knew at all.</p>
<p>It didn’t matter. He’d have to go there to find it anyway. He’d find out what the issue was then. Hopefully nothing that’d splatter his guts all over the lab’s nice linoleum.</p>
<p>Jim had been ready to head over to the lab that same night, break in under cover of darkness the way he’d done before. He wasn’t entirely sure how he’d ended up collapsed on the Byers’ broken-springed couch watching <em>Gunsmoke</em> reruns instead.</p>
<p>Jonathan had taken off, with some excuse about Steve Harrington and Nancy Wheeler and something about Barbara Holland being back that didn’t make a lick of sense when Jim stopped to think about it. But the rest of Joyce Byers’ weird extended family were all here. Will was cross-legged on the floor, leaning back against his mom’s knees, but the rest of them were piled on the couch with Jim, El curled up under his right arm like she was a little kid again and seeking comfort, and Joyce wedged in on his left. ‘Wedged’ because Bob was on <em>her</em> left, and the couch was small enough that, between Jim and Bob, Joyce must have been feeling like the filling in a sandwich.</p>
<p>Jim had to do a quick mental about-face on the image that <em>that</em> thought conjured up. There were kids here, for Chrissake.</p>
<p>Besides. Joyce had already fallen asleep. She’d passed out almost as soon as she’d sat down, like she’d been so tired for so long that once she finally relaxed, she couldn’t help it. Jim knew that feeling a little too well. Now she was snoring softly, her head pillowed against Bob’s arm, the full length of her leg pressed up against Jim’s, a faint, steady, warm pressure. Like a silent reassurance that she was there, that she wasn’t going anywhere.</p>
<p>She looked younger, almost, more like the girl he remembered from high school with her eyes shut and that little crease of worry in her forehead smoothed out in peaceful sleep. As gently as he could, careful not to wake her up, Jim took the hand she’d let fall in his lap and twined his fingers with hers. She smiled, ever so slightly, in her sleep. He could feel the helpless smile that wormed its way onto his own face, but couldn’t stop it. Didn’t really want to.</p>
<p>El shifted a little closer, burrowing in under his arm, and settled with her shoulder jammed into his ribs and one bony knee stabbing him in the thigh. She was starting to grow into her limbs, but for now she was still all angles and elbows, like a newborn colt. Jim was finally starting to be able to look at her without so much as a twinge about how she was older now than Sara’d ever be, about how she’d get to do things, see things, feel things, that Sara never would. He wanted all of it for her, he realised, with a surge of inexplicable emotion. Even if it hurt to see. Everything Sara couldn’t have, he wanted for El.</p>
<p>And more than anything, he wanted her to have the kind of life where she’d get to be the one on the couch, with her people all around her, warm and safe. And…happy. She should have the kind of life where she got to have more moments like this one.</p>
<p>Something, some sixth sense or instinct or something, told him he was being watched. Jim looked up, and realised Bob Newby had stopped staring at Joyce’s sleeping face with that lovesick-puppy look and turned his attention onto Jim instead. There was the faintest furrow of a frown on his face, like he was trying to work out a tricky puzzle. Jim hastily banished the soppy idiot smile he’d been caught sporting, shifting to readjust El’s shoulder in his ribs. “Hey. Kid. Your bony elbows aren’t so comfortable.”</p>
<p>El blinked up at him, before squirming out from under his arm to lie with her legs hooked over the arm of the couch, using his knee as a pillow as she turned her head to watch the show. Jim sighed, and gave her hair a quick ruffle before settling back into the couch himself. Her hair was getting so long now. Thank goodness for Joyce, he’d never figured out how to braid like that and he never would’ve on his own.</p>
<p>When he looked up again, Bob was still giving him that look. Jim shot him a glower, and Bob turned back to the TV set, though the corners of his mouth turned up slightly as he did.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Bob Newby, damn him, really was good with kids.</p>
<p>“There’s got to be <em>something</em> he’s bad at,” Jim said to Joyce, Monday evening, watching the guy retrieve the flipped Monopoly board for the third time. El always had been a sore loser, but Jim was starting to think tonight’s telekinetic flare-ups weren’t so accidental as she was pretending. Bob almost certainly had the same suspicion, but he hadn’t called her on it yet. He’d just kept cheerfully beating her at the game.</p>
<p>Jim must’ve spoken louder than he realised, because Bob straightened up with a puff and a good-natured smile, before saying, “Team sports, mostly. And I never really got the hang of making a meringue that didn’t turn into a pancake in the oven.” There was the faintest flicker of mischief in his voice as he added, oh-so-casually, “Oh, and sprinting.”</p>
<p>“Cute,” Jim muttered, as Joyce dissolved into helpless, slightly manic laughter. God, she had a beautiful laugh. “Real cute.”</p>
<p>They were supposed to sit down together and come up with a plan for what to do about whatever was going on at the lab once dinner was done. But Jim put it off just a little longer by volunteering to help clean up, insisting gently but firmly that Joyce sit <em>down</em> for a minute, talk to her kids, take a damn break for once. She finally gave in after Jim – still gently but firmly – took her by the arms and sat her down on the couch and El, who might actually be a mind reader, thumped down beside her and asked very solemnly if she could ask some questions about <em>boys</em>. Jim gladly left them to it.</p>
<p>Bob gave him a broad smile when Jim joined him in the kitchen, but anybody could’ve seen how tense he was. “All right, you got me alone,” he said, quietly, wringing out the dishcloth. “What didn’t you want Joyce to hear?” The smile faltered, then disappeared, his attempt at humour sounding strained. “How long have I got, doc?”</p>
<p>Jim blinked. “What?”</p>
<p>Bob blinked back at him, dread slowly changing to confusion. “That’s…what you’ve been doing, isn’t it? You and El? Trying to find out what caused – this.” He gestured down towards himself with a rueful sort of grimace. “I thought that was why you wanted to get me alone. You haven’t found something out that’ll upset Joyce?”</p>
<p>“What? No. No, we still don’t really know what’s going on,” Jim said, and watched the tension all bleed out of Bob. Jesus. He’d really been scared of what he thought Jim was going to tell him.</p>
<p>Jim couldn’t blame him. Nobody had any idea what was going on, except that it was something impossible. And the last time Bob had been around for something mysterious and impossible, it’d killed him.</p>
<p>But the first person he’d thought about was <em>Joyce</em>. How it would hit <em>her</em> to find out something was wrong. For a sliver of a second, Jim felt unimaginably selfish.</p>
<p>“No,” he said, a little overloud, trying to drown out his own thoughts. “This is the shovel talk.”</p>
<p>“Shovel -” Bob gave a little laugh, reaching across the counter to grab the stack of dinner dishes and dump them into the soapy water. “What?” He looked up, and Jim was surprised to see that those soft blue eyes could be so uncomfortably knowing. “Is this about Joyce?”</p>
<p>“Well, it sure as hell better not be about the kid.”</p>
<p>Bob gave a little horrified shudder.</p>
<p>“Joyce and I aren’t dating,” he said, turning back to the dishes. “I thought she was dating <em>you</em>.”</p>
<p>“She was,” Jim muttered.</p>
<p>He squirmed uncomfortably under the sympathetic look Bob turned on him. “She broke up with you? Over <em>me</em>?” Bob shook his head. “I thought – we talked about this, I thought she understood -”</p>
<p>“She didn’t dump me! Is it really so hard to believe I might just want what’s best for her?” Jim took a few steps forward, not yet pinning Bob back against the counter but close enough to make it clear that it was an option. “And whether I like it or not, I’m not dumb enough not to see that’s you.”</p>
<p>Bob was starting to look nervous again, but not nearly nervous enough for somebody with Jim Hopper up in his face. This was going straight off the rails, and Jim wasn’t sure how to salvage it.</p>
<p>“Look, she picked you,” he said, trying to put an edge of threat into it. “She deserves it all and she picked <em>you</em>. I’m not gonna stand in the way of that. But if you fuck it up – if you hurt her -”</p>
<p>He shifted, leaning forward on one hand against the counter, getting into Bob’s personal space. This close, Bob, who was <em>finally</em> starting to look good and uncomfortable, practically radiated heat. He must’ve been wearing some cologne or aftershave or something, because mixed with the powerful smell of Joyce’s cheap laundry detergent, there was a faint, clean, kind of perfume-y scent hovering around him, something Jim couldn’t name but almost recognised. It was kind of nice.</p>
<p>It might’ve actually been his <em>own</em> cologne, lingering on the clothes Bob had borrowed, though it smelled different on somebody else. Joyce had purged a bunch of stuff when she’d moved, and most of Newby’s closet seemed to have gone the way of the worry-free. Between Joyce and the kid, Jim had gotten used to never getting to wear his own shirts – and no way he was complaining, they were adorable on the kid and hot as hell on Joyce – but until this most recent round of weirdness had started, he’d never seen one on another man before. There had to be some kind of rule against some other guy looking better in your clothes than you did.</p>
<p>Which were all weird thoughts to be having about somebody you were trying to threaten. Jim tried to put his priorities back in order. “If you do anything to hurt Joyce, I will personally put you back in the ground. And make sure you don’t come crawling out again.”</p>
<p>He could see Bob’s throat work as he swallowed. He didn’t take his eyes off of Jim’s face.</p>
<p>They were nice eyes, too. Kind. Like they were meant to be always smiling.</p>
<p>Hell, the guy’s whole deal looked like he’d been designed by Jim Henson to look friendly and appealing. And it wasn’t like he’d ever acted like anything but what you see is what you get. Lonnie Byers had been a no-account asshole from day one, and anyone who’d met him once could tell you Jim Hopper had more issues than Penthouse, but if Bob Newby was secretly a jerk, he’d got that shit locked down tighter than Fort Knox. For once, it seemed like Joyce had actually caught a damn break.</p>
<p>Jim abruptly felt like even more of a heel than usual.</p>
<p>“Just be good to her,” he said, shortly, giving Bob’s shoulder a pat and then stepping back out of Bob’s space as fast as he dared, trying not to look like he was backing down.</p>
<p>Bob didn’t move for a long moment, leaning back against the counter like Jim was still in his space before blinking hard and rubbing a hand down his face. Apparently Jim’s threat had made more of an impression than he’d thought.</p>
<p>“Joyce…can decide for herself what she wants,” Bob said, after giving his head a little shake, like he couldn’t quite believe his ears. “I don’t want to see her get hurt either, but I’m not going to try to tell her what she should and shouldn’t do. And – you should see the way she looks at you. If you made her choose, I don’t think she’d pick me.”</p>
<p>A shadow passed over his face before he added, “Besides. I don’t think we should make any big decisions until we know how permanent – all this – is going to be.”</p>
<p>Jim shrugged. “What, scared you might drop dead on her again?”</p>
<p>Bob paused, before nodding, once, like it was costing him.</p>
<p>Jim watched him quietly suffering for a second before taking pity on him. “Look. Anybody might do that. You’re not special there. And Joyce knows what she’s getting into. She tell you about last year?”</p>
<p>Bob shook his head. “She hasn’t even told me much about what happened right after I – died. Something happened last year?”</p>
<p>“Joyce should tell you. I was…out of the loop for a lot of it. Point is, you weren’t the last guy to drop dead on her. And you weren’t the first one to come back.” Jim looked up at the clock on the wall, staring at the hands blankly. He couldn’t have said if it was nine-thirty or noon, if anyone had asked. “Joyce Byers doesn’t give up on people. So if you really mean it about letting her make her own decisions, stop worrying so much about what happens when the clock strikes midnight, and start thinking about who you wanna dance with while you’ve still got the glass slippers on.”</p>
<p>Bob gave him a long look, like he wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. But all he said was, “I think I see where your girl gets it from.”</p>
<p>“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”</p>
<p>“Don’t worry, it’s a compliment.”</p>
<p>Before Jim could say anything to that, Jonathan came tearing into the kitchen, breathing hard, a wild, frightened look in his eyes. He glanced at Bob for a moment, with a flicker of confusion that turned back to worry as his gaze settled on Jim.</p>
<p>“Nancy just called,” Jonathan said, the words pouring out of him in a rush. “Something’s wrong at Barb’s.”</p>
<p>“’Wrong’? What’s that mean, <em>wrong</em>?”</p>
<p>Jonathan took a deep breath. “Barb’s parents are dead.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Hollands were, no doubt about it, dead. There was no way they could’ve been deader. They looked like they’d been mummifying in their seats at the kitchen table in their little apartment for decades. If not centuries.</p>
<p>Plates of half-eaten lasagna still sat in front of each of them. Mr. Holland’s withered claw was still clutching a fork that, for some reason, was giving Jim the screaming heebie jeebies. Desiccated corpses propped up around a dinner table? Either in threat level or sheer gross-out factor, they had nothing on those lizard-dog-things. But that fork? There was an irrational part of him that expected, if it was sitting in <em>that</em> hand, the thing should’ve been at least tarnished. It had no business looking as shiny as it did.</p>
<p>It was out of place. And things that were out of place, in Jim’s experience, sometimes meant something you didn’t see was about to explode if you let your guard down.</p>
<p>He turned his back on the grim tableau only reluctantly.</p>
<p>Barbara Holland was sitting on the couch in the living room, facing away from the grisly sight, a small thoughtfulness that one of the other teenagers huddled protectively around her must’ve come up with. Jim wondered which one of them would’ve thought of it.</p>
<p>Nancy Wheeler, who was gripping both Barbara’s hands in her own and sitting so close to Barbara that she was practically in her lap, was alternating between watching Barbara with big liquid eyes like some cartoon woodland creature and glaring daggers at anyone who dared get within five feet. Anyone, that was, except Steve Harrington, who was standing awkwardly beside the couch with his arms crossed over his chest and glowering out at the rest of the room like a concerned bouncer, and Jonathan Byers, who’d taken in the whole scene at a glance as soon as they’d stepped through the door and immediately gone marching away down the hall, emerging a few minutes later with a knit blanket that he’d settled carefully and gently around Barbara’s shoulders.</p>
<p>Barbara herself seemed fully occupied with staring blankly into the middle distance with a look of stunned horror. She didn’t react when Nancy reached up and brushed a loose red curl off her forehead, and only just turned her gaze onto Jonathan when he knelt down in front of the couch, looking up at her.</p>
<p>His voice was low, soft, gentle, like someone talking to a spooked animal. “Barb. Can you tell us what happened?”</p>
<p>Nancy shook her head. “She wasn’t making any sense, when she called, she was just babbling -”</p>
<p>Jonathan didn’t take his eyes off Barbara’s face, and his voice didn’t get any less low or soft or gentle, but there was still a note of warning in it when he said, “I’m asking Barb, Nancy.”</p>
<p>Nancy bit her lip, looking like she might argue, but Steve put a hand on her shoulder and the fight seemed to drain out of her. Jonathan glanced up, and Steve gave him a tiny nod. He nodded back, and Jim thought he saw the ghost of a smile cross Jonathan’s face before he turned back to Barbara. Whatever <em>that</em> was about.</p>
<p>“Barb? Can you hear me?”</p>
<p>Barbara’s nod was glacially slow and even tinier than Steve’s had been, but Jonathan nodded back anyway, and Nancy squeezed her hands so tight that her fingers went white. “Okay,” Jonathan said, still in that awful soft voice. “Are you hurt?”</p>
<p>This time, even someone who wasn’t watching for it like a hawk would’ve seen Barbara’s head shake.</p>
<p>“Good. That’s good.” Jonathan glanced back over his shoulder, catching Jim’s eye, and Jim shrugged. The kid was doing fine so far, and Nancy Wheeler was still doing her best impression of a junkyard dog whenever Jim got too close. He was just fine not messing with her. He’d seen her shoot. “Barb…did you see what happened to your parents?”</p>
<p>Barbara shook from head to toe like a leaf in a high wind, just once. Nancy extricated the fingers of one hand from her death grip to wrap an arm around Barbara’s shoulders, leaning into her like she could replace the blanket with her skinny body.</p>
<p>Hurt and anger flashed across her face when Barbara suddenly and violently pushed her away. But all Jim saw in Barbara’s eyes was fear.</p>
<p>“No – Nancy!” she shouted, when Nancy leaned in to try to pull the blanket back up over her shoulders. “Get away, get <em>away</em> from me – all of you! Get <em>out</em> of here!”</p>
<p>“Barb, you’re in shock,” Nancy said, determinedly casual, reaching out again. “We’re your friends, we’re trying to help. You’re not thinking straight -”</p>
<p>“No!” Barbara leapt to her feet, almost bowling Jonathan over, and Jim decided enough was enough. He braved the death glare of Nancy Wheeler to grab Barbara by both arms just above the elbow, staring hard into her face as she tried to pull away.</p>
<p>“Hey!” The sharp sound seemed to hit Barbara like a slap, judging by the way she flinched. “Hey. It’s okay, kid.”</p>
<p>“No,” Barbara said, her voice falling off to barely a whisper. “No. No, it’s not. You <em>have</em> to get away.”</p>
<p>Jim gave her a long look. “You know what did this, don’t you.”</p>
<p>Barbara tossed one last, agonised glance over her shoulder at Nancy, before slumping forward, staring at her toes. Jim had to strain to hear her.</p>
<p>“Me. It was me.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Hollands weren’t the only ones.</p>
<p>Jim had barely gotten off the phone to tell Joyce what had happened when Will and El came charging in, waving Will’s walkie-talkie. Dustin’s mom had found the mummified corpse of Tews the cat curled up in her armchair. And Max’s stepfather, from the sounds of things, had had his last run-in with Billy Hargrove. Joyce wondered if it was wrong that she didn’t feel too very sorry about that. She’d only met Neil Hargrove once, but Max had been coming around to visit a lot, and – Joyce hadn’t exactly formed the best impression of the man.</p>
<p>It hadn’t taken the kids long to decide that whatever was going on, it had to have something to do with the returned. That they were feeding, somehow, on living things that got close enough. Draining them of energy or – something, whatever it was that kept people going.</p>
<p>They didn’t seem to agree on much beyond that, though. Dustin was convinced it was a one-for-one exchange. Max was just as convinced that the returned, like vampires, could choose who they sucked the life out of. But what Jim had said about the Hollands didn’t seem to fit with either of those ideas. <em>Both</em> of them were dead. And from the way Jim had told it, it almost sounded like poor Barbara hadn’t had any control over it. Like she hadn’t even realised it was happening until it was already too late.</p>
<p>Waiting for Jim to get back felt like it took years. Joyce couldn’t stop picturing a thousand worst-case scenarios, the truck on fire in a ditch with a withered corpse behind the wheel first among them. But finally, lights swept into the drive and the truck pulled to a stop just behind Joyce’s Pinto. Everyone who climbed out was whole and living and in one piece – Jim and Nancy and Barbara.</p>
<p>“Jonathan took off with the Harrington kid. His friend Robin’s been hanging around with that Holloway girl,” Jim said, as they came up the drive, anticipating Joyce’s question before she could even form the stab of dread at the sight of the three of them into a solid thought. “They’ll come back here and meet us once they know everybody’s all right. I told him to call you before they leave, let you know he’s safe.”</p>
<p>He drew up to Joyce, giving her arm a steadying squeeze as he looked intently down into her face. “Hey. You okay?”</p>
<p>Joyce bit down hard on her bottom lip, hugging herself a little tighter as she nodded with a smile that didn’t even feel convincing to herself. “We figured there might be more to this. I mean – how often do we get this kind of a break with no strings attached?”</p>
<p>“Still.” Jim looked up. “Where’s Newby?”</p>
<p>Joyce uncoiled one arm just enough to gesture, vaguely, back over her shoulder. “Bob – he went out the back, after you called. Said he wanted a walk to clear his head.”</p>
<p>She didn’t believe for a second that that was the real reason Bob had left. But – Will and El had both been there. Just across the coffee table. And they didn’t know – what, or how, or – they just didn’t know.</p>
<p>So Joyce hadn’t called Bob’s bluff. She probably shouldn’t have hugged him before he went, or planted that kiss on his cheek, either. She should, maybe, have been thinking of the kids first, of the risk, of what happened to them if she died.</p>
<p>But – she didn’t know what would happen next. None of them did. And she couldn’t have let him go again without at least one kiss.</p>
<p>That thought had set a black suspicion stirring in the back of her mind. Even now, even taking in the stupefied, guilty look on Barbara Holland’s face, it was still swirling slowly in the muck at the bottom of Joyce’s thoughts.</p>
<p>She’d thought Jim would understand, would agree with her decision right away. But to her surprise, his scowl got deeper, and he took a step back, hand going to the holster at his hip. “You let him just wander off?”</p>
<p>“I didn’t – with the kids here, and, I thought -”</p>
<p>“So he’s out there somewhere in the woods <em>alone</em>?”</p>
<p>“He was the one who volunteered to go! He could’ve just stayed put if he was looking for somebody to drain!”</p>
<p>Barbara flinched. Nancy wrapped an arm around her waist and steered her up the porch steps to the front door, shooting Joyce a glare as she went. If that glare had come from El, Joyce had no doubt it would have snapped her neck.</p>
<p>“That wasn’t what I -” Jim pressed a palm to his face, dragging it slowly down over his chin. “Forget it. Where would he have gone?”</p>
<p>Joyce shook her head. “I, I don’t know, there’s really not anywhere else -”</p>
<p>“Joyce.” Jim’s hand on her shoulder was a reassuring, grounding weight. His voice had gone gentle again, deep and even and steady, and his eyes as he searched her face were concerned. “I need you with me here. Okay? I need you to think. Where else would he have gone?”</p>
<p>Joyce breathed out a long breath, trying to still the jangling, frantic feeling that had her thoughts all tangling up in each other. “I don’t – <em>know</em>, I don’t -”</p>
<p>It struck her suddenly, and she jabbed a pointed finger at Jim, once, twice. “The lab. It’s – not far, you could walk from here. And remember, you told us El said something was rotten -”</p>
<p>Jim nodded slowly. “And if somebody was feeling brave and noble and stupid -” He bit off his own sentence with a muttered curse, turning back towards the truck with that hand on his holstered pistol. “Go check on the kids, will you? Get Nancy something warm to drink, maybe, she’s had a shock too and she’s gotta be running on fumes.”</p>
<p>“Nancy Wheeler can handle herself,” Joyce said, jutting her chin out in defiance. “And our kids, for a little while. You just said you needed me with you. You’re not leaving me behind now.”</p>
<p>“Joyce -”</p>
<p>“Jim Hopper!” Joyce took a step forward, staring him down. “Didn’t we already talk about this? You’re not going out there alone.”</p>
<p>Jim looked – surprised, Joyce thought, for a moment. But he didn’t argue, and she knew she wasn’t imagining the warmth behind the grumble. “Fine. Your funeral. Jump in the truck.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The trees stood out pale and stark in the headlights, appearing suddenly as the light washed over them and then flickering away again, like they were leaping out towards the road from the dark mass of the woods.</p>
<p>Joyce didn’t actually press her nose to the passenger-side window as she peered out into the dark, but she came close. With every new pale shape that swept into the circle of light the headlights threw in front of them, her heart jumped into her throat all over again. But they never turned out to be anything but trees.</p>
<p>That was, until they started around the wide bend before the gate leading into the lab’s property, and the headlights caught the circle of a white, frightened face. A <em>familiar</em> face.</p>
<p>“Wh- Joyce!” Jim shouted, when Joyce started to open the door while the truck was still moving. He stomped on the brake, though, the truck screeching to a halt as Joyce spilled out of it. She was running as soon as her feet hit the ground. The solid <em>chunk</em> of the truck’s door closing and Jim’s heavy footfalls behind her told her he was following close behind her, but she didn’t dare look back.</p>
<p>There was an irrational, absolute certainty in her, the same kind of certainty that had once told her Will was alive, that if she took her eyes off Bob’s face now, she’d never see him again. That he would simply evaporate into the darkness like the ghost he really was.</p>
<p>But when she slammed into him, throwing both arms around him, he was as solid as she was.</p>
<p>“Joyce?” Bob asked, like he couldn’t quite believe it was her, like he’d been dreaming and then woken up to find out that what he’d dreamed was really happening. And then, with creeping horror, “You shouldn’t have come looking for me. What if – what about the kids? Don’t -”</p>
<p>“Bob Newby, shut up and hug me back,” Joyce told him, firmly.</p>
<p>He was just raising his arms, nervously, to wrap around her in turn when Joyce heard Jim drawing up behind her. “Hell did you think you were doing?” he demanded, sharply, but there was an undercurrent of relief in it.</p>
<p>Bob pulled away, gently but steadily, in a way Joyce couldn’t fight against. Instead of answering the question, though, he just said, “I knew it was too good to last. I just didn’t realise how hard the comedown was going to be.”</p>
<p>“What are you talking about?” Joyce asked, reaching out for him again, but Bob just took another step back with a shake of his head and a smile to break her heart.</p>
<p>“Come on. We all know nobody <em>really </em>comes back from the dead.” He took a deep breath, obviously collecting himself. “I – I already had my chance. But I wouldn’t do any of it differently. And I’ll prove it.”</p>
<p>“What? What – I don’t know what you’re talking about.”</p>
<p>“He’s <em>talking</em> about sacrificing himself to stop whatever’s happening up at the lab,” Jim said, low and quiet and certain, and Joyce looked up to see him staring through Bob’s face with a look she couldn’t quite read. “Right?”</p>
<p>“No! No, you wouldn’t, not after we just got you back.”</p>
<p>But Bob didn’t argue. And didn’t so much as crack a smile. “You said it yourself. That poor girl didn’t even know what was happening until it was too late. Joyce, I – I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to you or the kids because of me.”</p>
<p>“We could – you at least could have waited for us. Maybe, together – we still don’t even really know what this <em>is -</em>”</p>
<p>Jim’s hand on Joyce’s shoulder cut her sentence short. “Joyce. If whatever the kid found at the lab’s responsible for this, if it brought everybody back, then…if we fight it, if we kill it or send it back wherever it came from -”</p>
<p>“Then I probably turn back into a pumpkin anyway,” Bob finished for him, with a disarming smile. “So why should anybody else put themselves in danger?”</p>
<p>“Because we <em>care</em> about you? Because it matters what happens to you, whether you die alone? Because, maybe it doesn’t have to be like that, maybe – there’s got to be <em>something</em>, something we can – we don’t know <em>anything</em> about what did this, how do we know there’s no other way?”</p>
<p>“Joyce. Please. Don’t make this harder.” That smile didn’t falter, but Joyce <em>knew</em> the look that settled in Bob’s eyes. She’d last seen it on Jim. Seconds before she’d turned a key and blown him straight to hell. “There’s no way this ends well. Don’t make it worse. I’m – I’m already dead. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to let me go.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I think we both know Joyce is no good at letting go. Especially not when it’s people.” Jim ignored Joyce’s sputtering, his hand on her shoulder both a comfort and a restraint. “Look. I get it. Why you’re doing this. It’s brave. And noble.”</p>
<p>Joyce was about to start yelling when Jim added, “And stupid. What d’you think is gonna happen? If you go marching in there on your own like a big damn hero and get yourself killed, none of us know anything more about what’s in there or what to do about it, and then we’re worse off than we started. Let’s just see what the hell’s actually going on before we start talking about anybody dying, all right?”</p>
<p>He didn’t let Bob get a word in edgewise, reaching out to sling the arm that wasn’t holding Joyce across Bob’s shoulders and steering them both around, back to the truck. Jim easily and doggedly talked over all of Bob’s attempts to protest. “If you really wanna go storm the castle, fine. But first, we’re going back, we’re gonna talk to the damn kids, we’re getting the full story, we’re getting some weapons. <em>Then</em> we’ll come back here and be brave and stupid. All right?”</p>
<p>“But -”</p>
<p>Jim didn’t let Bob finish. “And if you’re really that worried about killing either of us by accident -” He let Joyce go just long enough to open the truck’s rear passenger-side door. “Then you can ride in the back.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>For once, something actually seemed to have worked out in Jim’s favour. Bob didn’t talk much on the way back to the house, but he also didn’t suddenly sprout fangs and sink them into anybody’s neck, or throw open the truck’s back door and go running off into the night, so Jim counted that as a win. Nobody was dead – yet, anyway – they had an idea of at least the location of the source of whatever this fresh weirdness was, and Joyce was still talking to him. In Jim Hopper’s world these days, that was about as good as it got.</p>
<p>So, of course, they got back to a scene straight out of a horror movie.</p>
<p>They could see the lights flickering from the drive, the windows strobing sunlight-bright and pitch-dark without any kind of rhythm. Joyce pressed a hand to her chest, her eyes going wide, and the instant Jim killed the engine she was already out the door, a raw scream of “<em>Will!</em>” tearing out of her.</p>
<p>It was drowned out, a second later, by a drawn-out, high-pitched shriek from somewhere in the house. Jim’s boots were already crunching on the gravel before he realised that El sounded more enraged than hurt or scared.</p>
<p>Joyce left the door hanging open behind her when she burst through it and into the house. Jim followed her, pistol drawn, and saw –</p>
<p>Well. For a second, he didn’t know <em>what</em> he saw. His mind flat-out refused to tell him what he was looking at, other than that it was <em>big</em>, and it was <em>wrong</em>.</p>
<p>And then – and then it was Barbara Holland, eyes an even flat black from corner to corner, face twisted in an open-mouthed snarl, arms outflung like she was grasping for something just beyond her reach. Suspended in midair, her hair and skirt snapping in a howling wind Jim could hear but couldn’t feel.</p>
<p>His heart seized in his chest. But another furious shriek made him look over towards the hall, and just the sight of El’s face brought the panic down enough that he could do a quick headcount. There was El, arms out in front of her in a defensive mirror of Barbara’s pose, blood streaming freely down her face; there was Nancy Wheeler, with a handgun drawn – where the hell did she keep getting guns? Where was she <em>keeping</em> them? – and an expression halfway between determination and despair; where – <em>there</em> was Will Byers, a little behind the two of them, eyes locked on Barbara’s face. For some reason, Will’s eyes seemed weirdly – darker than usual, or, <em>deeper</em> somehow. Jim had the slightly crazy thought that, whatever Will was seeing, it probably looked more like whatever he himself thought he’d seen in that split second when he’d first come through the door than it did like Barbara Holland.</p>
<p>But they were all there. All whole. All alive.</p>
<p>“Will!” Joyce cried out, as much terror as relief in it, and Barbara’s head snapped around much faster than any human’s should have. It should have been hard to tell where those black eyes were looking, without iris or pupil, but Jim <em>knew</em> they’d just fixed on Joyce.</p>
<p>He didn’t know what was going on. But he could see, with terrible clarity, what was going to happen next.</p>
<p>Joyce was already running for the kids, for her son, she wasn’t looking at the monster, she was already too far ahead. Jim wouldn’t make it to her in time.</p>
<p>He didn’t know how much of Barbara Holland was still in there, with whatever this thing was that was wearing her like a rubber Halloween mask. But – if it was between a girl who was already dead or <em>his</em> girls, the choice was really damn simple.</p>
<p>Jim aimed and fired, once, twice, catching Barbara square in the chest. Nancy gave a sobbing gasp from somewhere behind him, and he had to steel himself to fire again. The third shot hit Barbara in the head, sending a spray of black gore bursting across the wall behind her, and for a second Jim thought –</p>
<p>But Barbara’s head snapped back up, the flesh knitting back into place around the smoking ruins of one black eye. Her furious stare locked onto Jim, which at least meant she wasn’t paying attention to Joyce anymore.</p>
<p>Jim emptied three more rounds into her chest and stomach. <em>Big</em> fuckin’ surprise, it did nothing but piss her off. The growling hiss that tore from her twisted mouth wasn’t in any way human.</p>
<p>And then his pistol slipped from between suddenly-nerveless fingers and hit the floor.</p>
<p>The sound of it landing seemed very far away, for some reason. So did the annoying, high-pitched noise that grated against his ears. He was – exhausted, suddenly, like the whole day had caught up to him at once. Like the whole <em>year</em> had caught up to him at once. Barbara Holland’s eyes were very big, and very dark, and nice to look at. It looked quiet, in there. The best kind of boring. Like maybe a guy could get a damn <em>nap</em> without somebody shaking him and screaming in his ear –</p>
<p>And then sound and colour and light and feeling flowed back in. Jim tried to stand up on his own, to stop leaning on Joyce on one side and Nancy on the other, and nearly fell over his own feet. There was a horrible heavy weakness in his arms and legs, his heartbeat felt sluggish in his chest, his mouth and throat were so painfully dry that swallowing hurt. He had the nasty, pulse-thumping suspicion that he’d narrowly escaped death <em>again</em>.</p>
<p>“Wh-” he managed to rasp out, as Joyce and Nancy lowered him down onto – was that Joyce’s bed? When had they gotten into Joyce’s room? <em>How</em> had they gotten into Joyce’s room? Hadn’t they just been out in the hall in the middle of the monster showdown of the year?</p>
<p>“It’s here,” El said, and if her eyes were gleaming wetly and there were thick trails of blood coming from both her nostrils then at least she was <em>alive</em>. “The rotten thing, it came here -”</p>
<p>“I don’t know what happened,” Will butted in, his voice riding the knife-edge of panic. “I just looked over and she wasn’t, she wasn’t <em>her</em> anymore, she wasn’t <em>human</em> anymore -”</p>
<p>“We were lucky Will could see it,” Nancy said, and god, but did Jim ever appreciate her cool under fire. “Nothing changed, not that I could see. I just started getting tired, and then before I knew what was happening, El was screaming and Barb was in the air like – <em>that</em>.” She shuddered, and Jim thought that, if anything was going to make Nancy Wheeler crack, it might be this.</p>
<p>“She wouldn’t stop,” El said, almost pleading, her eyes huge as she caught and held Jim’s gaze. “I tried, I <em>tried -</em>”</p>
<p>“Hey. Hey. You did just fine, kid. You did great.” Jim reached over and let a hand flop on top of El’s, where she was leaning against the bed. He’d meant to take her hand, but this was about as much as he could manage. It seemed to be enough, anyway, judging by the way El’s face screwed up like she was trying hard not to cry. “I’m not mad. I just need to know what happened.”</p>
<p>“I tried,” El repeated, not much louder than a whisper. Like she was trying hard to keep it from being a sob.</p>
<p>“She was amazing,” Will said, like he was daring anyone to say otherwise. “She – I told her where that <em>thing’s</em> suckers were going, and she threw them off, every time, even though she couldn’t see them -”</p>
<p>“You were so brave, you were all so brave,” Joyce said, reaching out to cup Will’s face, stroke a hand over his hair, that fluttering restless touch touch touch she always did when she was nervous and trying to reassure herself that he was still there. “I’m so proud of you, baby.”</p>
<p>Will shook his head, brushing his mother’s hands away. “If I hadn’t been so worried about it going after you, I could’ve seen it and warned El before it got Hopper. None of this would be happening if I’d just -”</p>
<p>“Hey. Don’t beat yourself up.” A thought that had been brewing in the back of Jim’s mind for a while now finally took shape, and he said, “Whatever this is, it was smart enough to hide behind people we cared about to get close enough to suck us dry. I’d bet you it figured out you were the only one who could really see it, and that if it went after your mom it could distract you. Get past you.” Just saying that much took an effort. He let his head flop back on the pillow, feeling useless. “Not your fault.”</p>
<p>“And if it went after <em>you</em> – it could distract El,” Nancy said, slowly, looking at Jim. “Nothing anybody else did was even touching it, so -”</p>
<p>“So if it took both Will and El’s attention off it, nothing could stop it,” Jim finished for her. “Sounds like it worked. So why aren’t we all mummies right now?”</p>
<p>Nobody would meet his eyes.</p>
<p>The thought that Jim should already have been having struck him all at once. He looked around for Joyce, meeting her eyes as he asked the question he realised he didn’t want to know the answer to. “Where’s Bob?”</p>
<p>Joyce bit her bottom lip, and didn’t answer.</p>
<p>Jim tried to push himself up, tried to shrug off her efforts to press him back onto the bed, but he was still weak with exhaustion and little, birdlike Joyce was still able to manhandle him with embarrassing ease. “Joyce, where <em>is</em> he?” he demanded, hearing how pathetic it sounded even in his own ears.</p>
<p>It wasn’t Joyce who answered, but El. “You wouldn’t wake up,” she said, still in that near-whisper. “I couldn’t get it to get off, and you wouldn’t wake up.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know how he did it,” Will said, like he was picking up from where El had left off even though the two sentences didn’t sound connected in any way. “I saw it put a sucker out for El, but she wasn’t listening, she was trying to get it off of <em>you</em> – I think he saw it too. Somehow. Or maybe he just listened to me, it doesn’t matter, either way he…” Will swallowed hard. “He couldn’t touch it either. Couldn’t stop it. But he could get in the way.”</p>
<p>Jim stared at him for a long moment. For some reason, the pieces weren’t quite adding up.</p>
<p>“You’re saying,” he said, at last, “that that heroic idiot Bob Newby let himself get killed – <em>again</em> – for <em>El</em>? For <em>my kid</em>? The one who acts like she doesn’t even like him?”</p>
<p>The dam broke, and El flopped down on top of Jim, burying her face in his chest. He awkwardly stroked the top of her head and tried to pretend not to notice the silent, shoulder-shaking sobs.</p>
<p>“Not…exactly,” Nancy said, with a darting, help-me glance over at Joyce.</p>
<p>Jim looked from one to the other. “Not exactly? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”</p>
<p>“Um.” Nancy tried a smile. It looked very perky and very fake, and she quickly let it go. “It’s… Whatever was…using Barb, we think it’s got to be what brought them back.”</p>
<p>“There’s…there’s just one,” El said, thick and muffled by the fabric of Jim’s flannel. “One mind. Rotten.”</p>
<p>“It’s got to be able to jump between them. Between the returned,” Will said. “That’s why I couldn’t see it until it was already in Barb. That’s why more people haven’t died. It can only use them one at a time.”</p>
<p>“But to keep them alive, a part of it, its power, whatever, would always have to be in all of them,” Nancy picked up again. “So, when your friend got in the way of this…’sucker’…” Her nose wrinkled up in that very special apologetic Nancy Wheeler look that meant she was trying very hard to look sympathetic and getting dubious results. “He – must have, somehow, opened some kind of feedback loop. Fed it to <em>itself</em>.”</p>
<p>“He bought us time,” Joyce said, in a dangerously quiet voice. She had one arm wrapped around herself, the other hand fluttering and grasping at the back of her neck like she was looking for something to hold onto, and she didn’t seem to be looking at anyone or anything that was actually in the room. “Again. He said to go…”</p>
<p>“So…he’s <em>not</em> dead.”</p>
<p>“It’s worse than that,” Will said. The lamp on the table beside him buzzed.</p>
<p>“Worse? It’s <em>worse</em> than dead?” Jim put an arm around El to steady her as he forced himself to sit up, bringing her up to sit on the edge of the bed with him. Joyce tried again to coax him back down, but this time, Jim determinedly ignored her. He was feeling a little stronger. Probably he could stand. He’d better damn well be able to stand. Because he was going to, whether he could or not.</p>
<p>The light on the bedside table flared brilliantly white, then flickered out before humming back to life.</p>
<p>“<em>There are thingsss worssse than death.</em>”</p>
<p>The voice that came from the doorway was only familiar in the way nightmares were familiar, at the moment of realising what horrible things were coming next with no way to stop them. It had a rustling, papery kind of echo, like moths’ wings or dead leaves, and everything it said seemed to have too many ‘S’es in it.</p>
<p>Will sucked in a breath, the flickering lamp casting dramatic shadows over his face. So abruptly it was almost unnatural, El’s shaking sobs stopped, her shoulders going still and tense under Jim’s arm. Nancy reached for her pistol. And Joyce –</p>
<p>Joyce just closed her eyes.</p>
<p>What stood in the doorway wasn’t Bob Newby. It looked like him, at a glance. It had his build, his height, his dark, close-cropped curls, his sideways, self-deprecating smile. It even had his kind eyes. Almost.</p>
<p>But it wasn’t him.</p>
<p>For a second, Jim felt like just closing his eyes too.</p>
<p>He didn’t even know why he was bothering still trying to fight. It never really mattered, anyway. The monsters always came back, bigger and meaner and smarter and with more of a grudge. Or they got replaced by something bigger and meaner and smarter that somehow managed to do more damage by not caring than it ever could have done with a grudge. Monsters, governments. <em>People</em>. It was always the same. He gave and gave and gave, lost and lost and lost, broke himself over and over again fighting for – what? The chance to throw himself at another fight six months later, where he’d lose even more?</p>
<p>Sara was still dead. Everybody else had got somebody back. Everybody else had got a second chance. But Sara was still dead.</p>
<p>Jim looked into Bob’s kind black eyes and wondered if it’d really be so bad if he just joined her.</p>
<p>And that was when Joyce, with unbelievably perfect timing, tackled the thing that wasn’t Bob Newby to the floor.</p>
<p>“Bob!” she yelled, as the thing she was holding pinned down shifted from an unassuming human man into a shrieking, writhing hole cut into the void of space, shadowy limbs thrashing wildly around the room. Jim could’ve sworn he could see through them, but <em>what</em> he saw through them – it was less like they were physical <em>things</em>, like an arm or leg, and more like somebody’d torn a strip off of reality to reveal the Upside Down in all its blue-dark rotting splendour on the other side. Like tearing away a strip of old wallpaper to reveal layers of even older wallpaper underneath. Watching them move made his head hurt. “Dammit, I <em>know</em> you’re in there! I am <em>not</em> losing you again!”</p>
<p>Jim blinked himself back into the moment. Nothing had changed, not really. None of the thoughts he’d just had were <em>wrong</em>. They were still staring down another goddamn monster fight. Sara was still dead. It felt like the hardest bleakly real, hungover morning he’d ever woken up into.</p>
<p>But he was alive. <em>They </em>were alive. And that meant there was still a chance.</p>
<p>“Joyce, goddamnit,” he swore, trying and failing to get to his feet. “Let it <em>go</em>, that thing isn’t him anymore, it’s trying to <em>eat</em> us -”</p>
<p>The glare that Joyce shot back at him made Jim falter. “Do you trust me?” she demanded.</p>
<p>There was an easy answer to that. <em>Yes, but</em>. Because that was Joyce’s whole problem, wasn’t it? She didn’t know when to let go. She didn’t know <em>how</em> to let go. Every tiny thing became a potential catastrophe because she couldn’t stop turning it over and over in her mind until it picked up importance and possible consequences like a snowball rolling downhill. And every hopeless situation became maybe salvageable the exact same way. Everyone in town knew she’d given Lonnie way too many chances. She just couldn’t accept that sometimes things were <em>over</em>. That sometimes you just had to cut your losses before the hopeless hope had a chance to break you.</p>
<p>But then – that was what Jim had thought, when she’d come to him with a wild theory about magnets and the end of the world. When she’d told him what Will was seeing wasn’t just trauma. When she’d said her missing – <em>dead</em> – son was talking to her through the Christmas lights.</p>
<p>And she’d been <em>right</em>. Every goddamn time Jim had thought Joyce needed to let go, needed to move on, she’d been <em>right</em>.</p>
<p>If Joyce Byers had ever given up when a reasonable person would’ve said it was hopeless, it was over – if she’d ever accepted that the people she loved were gone, if she’d moved on like everyone had wanted her to – none of them would be here right now. Will would be a frozen corpse in another reality. El would still be a lab rat.</p>
<p>Jim would be dead.</p>
<p>Joyce had gone through hell for him, this last year. She’d gone through hell for <em>all</em> of them. He owed his damn life and everything that made it worth living to the fact that she didn’t let go. He’d promised himself never to doubt her again.</p>
<p>And – Bob deserved so much better than to end up like this. He made Joyce happy. He made the kids happy. Hell, he – he made <em>Jim</em> happy. It was…good, having him around. Made things…less heavy, somehow. Joyce’s anxiety and Jim’s sullen gloom could infect any good time, but since Bob had been back, somehow there hadn’t been a single drawn-out uncomfortable silence or eruption of an old and stupid fight. Something about spending time with him and Joyce and the kids, doing <em>normal</em> things, smiling and laughing like the world wasn’t constantly throwing curveballs at them, made Jim feel like maybe it didn’t all have to be hard and painful, all the time. Maybe the world was worth it after all.</p>
<p>Even when Bob and Joyce had been dating and the envy had been eating Jim up, he hadn’t been able to hate the guy the way he hated that prick Lonnie. He didn’t think he’d ever met anyone quite as – as <em>genuine</em> as Bob. Or as generous. Not with <em>things</em>, maybe, but with his time and knowledge and help and heart.</p>
<p>And, in the end, his life.</p>
<p>Tonight made three times now that Bob had saved Jim’s life. If there was <em>any</em> chance for Bob – even the slimmest, most impossible one – then Jim owed it to him to return the favour.</p>
<p>He let out a long breath. “I trust you.”</p>
<p>“Then shut up and <em>help me!</em>”</p>
<p>The flailing shadows coiling off the central mass of the thing that wasn’t Bob Newby all suddenly contracted, curling in towards the void at their roots like the legs of a squashed spider. Joyce shouted in alarm, but they didn’t touch her.</p>
<p>Jim looked down, and gently wiped the trickle of fresh blood from El’s nose with the edge of his sleeve. She looked up, with her arm still outstretched towards the monster, caught his eye, and smiled.</p>
<p>You didn’t fight to win. He’d let himself forget that, for a moment. Or maybe that <em>thing</em> had made him forget. But he couldn’t forget for long. Not here. Not with these people. You <em>couldn’t</em> fight to win. If you did, then knowing there’d always be another fight would break you.</p>
<p>So you didn’t fight to win. You fought for just one more of those good moments. And you did, you gave, whatever the hell it took to know there would <em>be</em> even just one more of those good moments.</p>
<p>Even if it meant you might not be there to see it.</p>
<p>It turned out Jim <em>couldn’t</em> stand. As soon as he tried, his legs went out from under him and he slithered to the floor on his knees. But he ended up shoulder-to-shoulder with Joyce anyway, so – again. You took the wins you could get.</p>
<p>He wasn’t sure how he could tell that the thing Joyce was struggling to hold pinned against the floor had turned its attention onto him. It didn’t have eyes. Or maybe it had too <em>many</em> eyes, it was impossible to tell from one second to the next. But eyes or not, Jim could feel it looking at him. Feel its cold, malicious, <em>hungry</em> interest.</p>
<p>For a split second, he had no idea what he was doing or why. This was <em>crazy</em>. There was absolutely no sign there was anything of Bob left. There was nothing warm, nothing kind, nothing <em>human</em> about this thing at all. Joyce had to be wrong eventually, didn’t she?</p>
<p>And Jim threw himself on top of the creature on the floor with all the strength he had left and a sudden adrenaline shot of hope. Because the two times that this thing had got its hooks into him tonight had showed him a thing or two about how it worked.</p>
<p>And <em>that hadn’t been his thought.</em></p>
<p>“You’re scared,” he grunted, as it jerked and buckled under his weight, nearly throwing him back to the floor. It was icy cold, his fingers almost instantly going numb as he tried to get a solid grip on it, and it wouldn’t stop shifting long enough for him to try to pin it in place. But even the wave of nearly-overwhelming despair it tried to send through him couldn’t wipe the almost manic bared-teeth grin off his face. “She’s got your number, pal. He <em>is</em> still in there, isn’t he? Fighting you? And if he wins – that’s it for you, huh? That’s why you don’t want us helping him out. Well, I got bad news for you, ugly.”</p>
<p>He looked up, met Joyce’s eyes, met her watery, dawning smile.</p>
<p>It broke, like sunlight through clouds, into that same warm, brilliant grin he’d always loved just a little bit, still somehow unchanged by all the shit the world had put her through, when Jim said, much softer than he’d intended, “Joyce Byers is no good at letting go. And turns out I’m not so hot on it either.”</p>
<p>He should’ve seen it coming. He <em>really</em> should’ve seen it coming.</p>
<p>But Jim was somehow still surprised when something shifted under his hands and, instead of icy void, he was holding fever-warm human flesh. When he looked down, and Sara was looking up at him, with big, black eyes.</p>
<p>“<em>No,</em>” she said, in that horrible hissing voice. “<em>You aren’t.</em>”</p>
<p>He should’ve seen it coming. But instead, Jim froze in place.</p>
<p>But Joyce didn’t.</p>
<p>The scream that ripped out of her was raw and ragged and furious, and Sara’s shoulders blurred into blue-black smoke where Joyce grabbed them. “Stop it!” she yelled, pulling Sara up off the floor and giving her a single rough shake. “<em>Stop</em> this! Give him <em>back!</em>”</p>
<p>Sara opened her mouth to spit a growling hiss into Joyce’s face, and then changed, again, under Jim’s hands. She was cold, again, though not nearly as cold as before, and strangely rough-skinned under a layer of – slime…?</p>
<p>It took Jim entirely too long to realise that what he was holding onto wasn’t his daughter, anymore, but a monster.</p>
<p>Not the same monster as before, though. It wasn’t a void. It was – Christ, it was one of those lizard-dogs. The ones that had killed Bob the first time around.</p>
<p>Joyce let out a shuddering breath as its face flared open and those teeth snapped inches from her face. “Don’t shoot!” Jim yelled, holding out a hand behind him. He didn’t dare look back, didn’t dare take his eyes off the <em>thing</em> he was trying to hold in place, but he had a pretty good idea of what he’d have been doing in Nancy Wheeler’s shoes. And he couldn’t let that happen. “Don’t shoot, I – we got this.”</p>
<p>“Are you <em>sure</em>?” Will yelled back. Jim reminded himself sharply that it would be a bad idea to flip off Joyce’s kid.</p>
<p>Joyce herself chose that moment to make a move Jim probably would’ve tried to stop her from doing if he’d known what she was planning. Ignoring all the <em>teeth</em>, she threw herself forward, straight at the thing’s <em>mouth</em>, to wrap both her arms around its neck. Even Will’s panicked shout of, “Mom!” only earned him an apologetic glance back over her shoulder, before she buried her face in the mucous coating the thing’s neck. Jim had to wrap his arms around it too, pinning its forelegs as best he could against its body as it twisted and snapped and writhed, trying to keep it from doing any damage, trying to keep it from getting away.</p>
<p>So he was close enough to hear what Joyce was saying, over and over again.</p>
<p>“Please. It’s you, I know it’s still you, come back. <em>Please</em>.”</p>
<p>The monster kicked and clawed and struggled until Jim’s arms were burning, his heart pounding against his ribs like a sledgehammer. What little strength he’d had left after its earlier attacks was bleeding away fast, exhaustion looming over him like a wave waiting to break, just looking for an opportunity to crash down and flood him. It didn’t help that the shape this thing had chosen was <em>slippery</em>. Just trying to keep a grip was a challenge in itself.</p>
<p>He wasn’t going to last. He didn’t even know what Joyce thought they were doing, what she thought was going to happen. If she had an end goal in mind, he wasn’t seeing it. Didn’t know what it was or how to tell how close or far away it might be. All he knew was that his grip was slipping, and this time he wasn’t going to have the strength to get it back.</p>
<p>And then the lizard-dog gave one last pathetic whine and slumped forward and was Bob Newby, kneeling on the carpet and leaning heavily against Joyce’s shoulder.</p>
<p>Jim nearly pulled away when he realised he wasn’t pinning down a monster anymore, but holding another man in what came dangerously close to an embrace. Then he decided that the odds of anyone in this room giving a shit were astronomically insignificant next to what might happen if he let go now, and stayed put exactly where and how he was.</p>
<p>If this was another illusion, it was a damn good one. He <em>smelled</em> like Bob. Was warm through the soft flannel of his borrowed shirt just the same.</p>
<p>It took Jim a moment to work out that Bob was talking. That the low sound he was hearing was words. “Joyce. Please. I can’t -” Bob broke off, and when he started again, it sounded choked. “I can’t keep this up forever. You have to let me go, get everyone out. Get them away. Don’t let me hurt anybody else.”</p>
<p>“No,” Joyce said firmly. “I won’t let you hurt anybody. And I’m not letting go.”</p>
<p>“<em>Joyce</em>. What about the kids?”</p>
<p>“Dirty pool, pal,” Jim muttered.</p>
<p>Bob’s head turned to look over at him, a little too fast, too jerky, just a little too much like Barbara’s had. The shadows the flickering light cast across his face somehow made even his friendly features sinister. Somehow, Jim wasn’t surprised to see that his eyes were still completely black. “Your <em>daughter</em>, Jim. You can’t lose another one. Please, let me go, take them, get <em>out</em>. Before I do something we’re all going to regret.”</p>
<p>Jim looked him square in those black eyes, like holes cut through into absolute darkness, and asked, “El? Holding up?”</p>
<p>“Holding up,” El echoed from behind him, her voice tight with exertion.</p>
<p>“Still hanging onto those shadow arm things?”</p>
<p>“Suckers,” Will said.</p>
<p>“Hey, it’s not nice to call people names, kid.”</p>
<p>“No, they’re its suckers. That’s what it used to latch onto you and Nancy! They’re still trying to get at you!”</p>
<p>“I told you,” Bob’s voice said. That earnest expression looked very weird with two black holes where his eyes should be. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold out. How much longer do you think your daughter can? You have to let me go. You have to get out while you still have a chance. While we all still have a chance.”</p>
<p>Jim risked a glance over at Joyce. He couldn’t be sure, of course, but he thought they were thinking the same thing. That this <em>was</em> their chance. And that they weren’t going to get another one.</p>
<p>“Nah,” he said, at last. “I’ll take my chances here.”</p>
<p>It happened so fast that Jim almost might have thought he’d imagined it, that it was a trick of the flickering lights. But – the flash of furious, frustrated <em>hate</em> was so startlingly out of place on Bob’s friendly face that, even though it was there and gone in the blink of an eye, Jim <em>knew</em> he’d seen it.</p>
<p>And all at once knew he’d made the right choice.</p>
<p>“Joyce?” the thing that wasn’t Bob Newby said, turning away from Jim. Now that he was listening for it, Jim could hear the sickening syrupy note in it. Trying way, <em>way</em> too hard. “Please, <em>you</em> have to listen to reason. What if this goes wrong? What happens to <em>Will</em>? You can’t hold on forever.”</p>
<p>Joyce bit down on her bottom lip. Her eyes flickered up to meet Jim’s, and he saw the question there. That bone-deep uncertainty, that dogged fear of the worst that he knew haunted her, more than anyone he’d ever met.</p>
<p>Which only meant that she knew, better than anyone he’d ever met, how to push through it.</p>
<p>“No,” she said, turning her gaze back to the thing that wasn’t Bob Newby. “I can’t.”</p>
<p>Her smile was radiant and full of menace. “But I don’t have to. I just have to hold on long enough.”</p>
<p>Jim had been right. Hate and fury really didn’t suit Bob’s face.</p>
<p>There was a short, sharp scream from behind them, and a panicked yell from Nancy. Jim spun, as much as he was able to without letting go, just in time to see El drop backwards onto the bed, eyes rolling back. Will was already sprawled on his side, across the pillows, his cheeks hollowing out under the always-sharp cheekbones he’d got from his mom, glazed-over eyes sinking deeper in their sockets.</p>
<p>There were two sharp retorts as Nancy fired at the thing Jim and Joyce were holding pinned, but then she was sinking to her knees, too, trying and failing to catch herself on the foot of the bed before she collapsed, face-first, onto the floor. The bones of the hand she’d flung out toward them as she fell pushed out against the skin, veins and tendons standing out in sharp relief as she started to wither right in front of Jim’s eyes.</p>
<p>He shifted his grip just enough to put a hand over Joyce’s. He couldn’t hold her in place, couldn’t stop her from getting up and running to her son. But her scream died to a sob and she stilled next to him at the touch, her fingers lacing carefully through his.</p>
<p>And she didn’t let go.</p>
<p>The thing that wasn’t Bob Newby looked at them both with a parody of sympathy. “I tried to warn you,” it said, with his voice. And then, “<em>Don’t be ssscared. You’ll all be together sssoon.</em>”</p>
<p>Joyce squeezed her eyes shut and started her litany again, leaning forward to press her lips close against the thing that wasn’t Bob Newby’s ear, her free hand cupping the back of his head and pulling him close, like she was going in for a kiss. “Please – <em>please</em>, you don’t have to do this, you wouldn’t do this, you have to stop this, please, <em>please</em> come back to us -”</p>
<p>Jim looked straight into the faint smirk that had settled, so <em>wrong</em>, on Bob’s familiar face, and knew that if this was the last thing he did, he was going to wipe it off.</p>
<p>He couldn’t hurt – whatever this was. It laughed off bullets. A headbutt or a fist to the face would be nothing but a gentle love-tap. He couldn’t get at what it <em>really</em> was, what really mattered to it. Not the way it had managed to do to all of them. To take the one thing they wanted most, the one thing they’d never be able to resist, and then twist it –</p>
<p>Joyce was right. This thing was a goddamn insult to the face it was wearing. Because Bob Newby was good, and kind, and smart, and generous, and brave, and if this fucking <em>scum</em> thought it could use him as a puppet, hurt their kids, take away everything Joyce cared about, take away everything <em>Jim</em> cared about –</p>
<p>The thought struck him all at once. Maybe there <em>was</em> a way to get at what really mattered to this thing. Because – if it was trying so hard to get Joyce to let go, then she had to have the right idea, holding on.</p>
<p>Maybe she just hadn’t gone far enough yet.</p>
<p>He didn’t dare try to tell Joyce what he was thinking. If this was going to work, it had to come as a surprise. Take that <em>thing</em> by surprise. Give their guy a chance. It might even be expecting it, coming from Joyce. Might not work. And they wouldn’t get another shot at it, if they blew it the first time.</p>
<p>“Hey,” he said. “Bob.”</p>
<p>The thing that wasn’t Bob Newby sneered in his face. Another expression that just looked <em>wrong</em> on him. “<em>You mussst know by now that thisss isss not your friend -</em>”</p>
<p>“Oh yeah,” Jim said. “Wasn’t talking to <em>you</em>.”</p>
<p>And then he leaned forward and kissed Bob square on the mouth.</p>
<p>For a split second, it was like Frenching an electrical socket. While standing in a thunderstorm. Holding a TV antenna. Every single one of Jim’s nerves stood on end. He could swear he heard colours.</p>
<p>And then it was – a kiss. A pretty nice one, actually. Especially as far as first kisses went, with all the usual awkwardness of who was turning which direction and whose nose was getting in whose way already out of the way. Jim couldn’t say he’d ever actually <em>thought</em> about this, ever sat down and daydreamed about making out with Bob Newby like a high school kid with a crush, but – he’d be lying if he said he’d never idly wondered. Especially when the guy had been dating Joyce, and getting clean and hiding a superpowered kid in the woods had kind of put the kibosh on bringing any of his old crowd home, so a lot of cold lonely nights had featured a well-worn fantasy involving Joyce and his old GTO and her old cheerleading uniform, and the mind sometimes wandered a little –</p>
<p>Anyway. Not that he’d thought all that much about this. But if he had, Jim didn’t think the real thing would’ve been too far off expectations. Bob seemed either too stunned to push back or just willing to let Jim take the lead, letting out a shuddery breath into Jim’s mouth when Jim brought his free hand up to cup the side of his face and press the kiss a little deeper. It tasted like licking a car battery, and then it just tasted like mouth, and then –</p>
<p>Bob made some muffled surprised noise and Jim pulled back like he’d been burned.</p>
<p>Joyce was staring at the two of them like she’d never seen either of them before, eyes almost perfectly round, mouth open in surprise. Unfortunately, the half-smile it was slowly turning into was probably just disbelief. Or maybe she just thought it was hilarious.</p>
<p>But Jim couldn’t actually bring himself to regret that he’d probably just blown up whatever chance he’d had with Joyce for good. Because –</p>
<p>Because that damn table lamp had finally stopped flickering.</p>
<p>And when he looked over at Bob, it was <em>Bob</em> looking back at him. Pink flush of human health making his cheeks literally rosy. Blinking warm, blue, perfectly <em>normal</em> eyes.</p>
<p>“…Jim?” he said, and Joyce let out a disbelieving little laugh.</p>
<p>“We’ll talk about this later,” Jim said, trying and failing to push himself to his feet. There was – something, some tension in the air or barely-heard sound or sense of general menace, that seemed to have bled out of the room. But he still had to ask. “How’re you feeling? Monster-y?”</p>
<p>“…only a little bit,” Bob said, after a tense second. “What -”</p>
<p>“<em>Later</em>. Joyce, can you stand up? Somebody’s gotta check on the kids.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Will’s breathing was shallow, but steady, and there was colour starting to come back into his cheeks and his too-pale lips. He frowned when Joyce put a hand on his shoulder, and murmured something that sounded like ‘five more minutes’. She tucked the covers up around him, stroking a hand over his hair as she watched the rise and fall of his chest grow steadier and stronger, before she went to check on the others.</p>
<p>There was a fine thread of blood trickling down from El’s left ear, but she opened her eyes when Joyce said her name, drawing in a sharp, frightened breath that quickly turned to an exhale of relief when she sat up and saw Jim kneeling on the floor. She ignored Joyce’s efforts to get her to sit a moment and rest, catapulting herself off the bed to throw her arms around Jim’s neck and press her face into his shoulder. He looked like he was a few seconds from sleep himself, but his tired smile was real, and the way he gathered her close while good-naturedly complaining that she was getting way too big to go climbing all over him like some kind of monkey told Joyce, better than any doctor could have, that they were both going to be okay.</p>
<p>Nancy had fallen the farthest, and the floor wasn’t nearly as soft as the bed. Joyce was careful not to shake her, not to move her, as she reached down to check for a pulse. She had a hazy half-recollection that you weren’t supposed to move people who might have broken bones –</p>
<p>But Nancy started awake at a touch, her head snapping up to scan the room in front of her. She brushed a few stray curls out of her face as she pushed herself up onto her elbows. “Miz Byers? What happened? Is it dead?”</p>
<p>“Um,” Joyce said, with a glance back at Bob, who gave an expansive shrug.</p>
<p>She was thankfully spared having to try to explain something she wasn’t sure she even really understood when Nancy jerked bolt upright with a gasp of “Barb!” Her gaze was clear and sharp again as Joyce helped her to her feet. “Is she all right? Is anybody else hurt?”</p>
<p>“We’re fine,” Joyce said, giving Nancy’s shoulder a pat. “Go see your friend.”</p>
<p>Nancy didn’t wait. She made for the door much faster than Joyce would’ve expected from someone who, a few minutes ago, was on the brink of death. She did pause once to lean heavily against the doorframe, but then she was moving again, half-running half-shuffling down the hall with a shout of Barbara’s name.</p>
<p>Joyce settled herself back on the bed beside Will. He didn’t open his eyes, but he did shift a little further under the covers until he was curled against her side. She brushed his bangs away from his forehead, running her fingers over and over through his hair like she used to when he was little and stayed home sick from school. It was almost impossible to believe, how close she’d come to losing him <em>again</em>, and it seized up her throat and squeezed her heart to think how unbelievably lucky she was to still have her boys –</p>
<p>A thought struck her, and Joyce started up from the bed, only for a hand to close over her wrist.</p>
<p>“Mom?” Will asked, cracking a single bleary eye up at her. Joyce managed a smile, though it felt nervous even to her.</p>
<p>“It’s all right, sweetie. I just – I’m going to see if I can find out where Jonathan is. You can keep sleeping. All right?”</p>
<p>Will frowned. His voice was soft, still half-asleep, and Joyce had to strain to hear and understand. “He’s still not here? But they were leaving ages ago.”</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>Will nodded, before letting his head drop back against the pillows. “He called while you guys were out looking for Bob. Just before Barb – He and Steve and the girls were coming here.”</p>
<p>For a moment, Joyce couldn’t breathe.</p>
<p>Jim’s voice was low and steadying, as always, an anchor when Joyce felt herself being set adrift. “It couldn’t have hurt them, Joyce. You heard what El said. One mind, right? Well, that mind was <em>here</em>. And we were keeping it busy. They’re fine.”</p>
<p>“You don’t <em>know</em> that, you can’t know that -”</p>
<p>“Whoa, wait.” Bob raised both his hands, palms out, the universal signal to slow down. Joyce noticed he’d drawn back away from Jim, now that Jim had El to lean against, and felt her heart sink a little further. She’d really thought, before everything had hit the fan, that they might have a chance. That maybe they could all find a way to get along, be happy. But now the tightrope was fraying apart under her feet. “I thought Jonathan went with Jim to the Hollands’. What girls?”</p>
<p>Joyce shook her head, trying to push aside that falling feeling. Her <em>son</em> was somewhere out there, and he should have been here. Maybe he was in trouble. Maybe worse. It didn’t matter if the two men she loved couldn’t even look each other in the eye anymore, if they were going to make her make an impossible choice, if the universe was going to present its bill for everything she’d managed to claw back out of its greedy grasp. It didn’t <em>matter</em>.</p>
<p>Make sure Jonathan was safe. That her boys were safe. That mattered. That was <em>all</em> that had ever mattered.</p>
<p>“Some – Robin Buckley. And Heather,” Jim said, and Joyce realised she hadn’t answered Bob’s question. “Tom Holloway’s kid. Died last year.”</p>
<p>The look of dawning realisation that crossed Bob’s face sent a fresh wave of panic shooting through Joyce. How had she let it take her this long to think – how had Jonathan not been the very <em>first</em> person she’d thought about after – god, if anything had happened to him –</p>
<p>“Joyce,” Jim said, firmly, and Joyce shut her eyes, taking a long, deep breath.</p>
<p>When she opened her eyes again, Bob was looking at nothing in particular with the same thoughtful frown Joyce had seen him wear – it felt like a million times, playing with that silly puzzle cube or staring at a crossword or looking over a jigsaw with a piece in hand. Trying to see where the pieces went, what the bigger picture was, how it all fit together.</p>
<p>“I can -” El started to offer, but then Bob looked up. For just a split second, there was something – something about – his eyes, or the way he looked at Joyce, or – just – <em>something</em> –</p>
<p>“She’s all right,” he said, with that slow, triumphant smile that meant he’d solved whatever he was working on, and the spell broke. Joyce breathed out. “Out cold, I think, though. They’re – close. And getting closer.”</p>
<p>It took Joyce a moment to process, through the dizzying wave of relief that washed over her, that Will’s grip had gone painfully tight on her wrist, that everyone else in the room was looking at Bob like his head had just spun three hundred sixty degrees on his shoulders.</p>
<p>“What the hell did you just do,” Jim demanded, finally, seeming to speak for everyone.</p>
<p>Bob’s smile slipped a few notches. “I, uh.” The look he turned on Joyce was just shy of pleading. “I don’t know?”</p>
<p>“<em>Mom.</em>” Will tugged at Joyce’s wrist, pushing himself up to sit on the bed beside her. “That was – did you see -”</p>
<p>“<em>I</em> did,” Jim growled, pushing El back, putting himself between her and Bob despite her protest. “Your <em>eyes</em> – what the <em>hell</em> was that?”</p>
<p>“What was <em>what</em>? I didn’t see -” Joyce started, stopped, and tried again. “I don’t…<em>think</em> I saw anything.”</p>
<p>“You’d know.” Jim seemed reluctant to take his eyes off of Bob for long enough to look back at Joyce. “You really didn’t see…?” He didn’t wait for Joyce to shake her head before darting a glance at El. “Kid, <em>you</em> must’ve…?”</p>
<p>El gave her head a furious shake, too, turning big eyes on Bob’s face. He looked so heartbroken that Joyce just wanted to get up and settle herself back down beside him, but Will’s hand on her arm kept her solidly in place.</p>
<p>“Nancy didn’t see it either,” Will said, and when Joyce looked over, he was giving Jim a thoughtful frown of his own. “When her friend – when Barbara – it was sort of like that, and she and El couldn’t see any of it.”</p>
<p>Jim was frowning, too, now, and Joyce braced herself when he turned back to Bob. But all he said was, “Do that again.”</p>
<p>“I’m – not even really sure I know what I did the first time -”</p>
<p>“Who said you had to know <em>what it was</em>? Just do whatever you just did. Again.”</p>
<p>Joyce watched carefully for it, this time, but she still didn’t see anything but the faintest, quickest imaginable flicker of – <em>something</em>, something she couldn’t name or describe or even be sure she’d seen at all but that for some reason left her heart racing, her pulse pounding.</p>
<p>But Jim just sat there, looking at Bob, eyes wide like whatever he was seeing, it was <em>not</em> just Bob’s familiar, friendly face. And – there was something, something about <em>his</em> eyes, something Joyce would have thought was just the light if she hadn’t seen that exact look on Will. In a soccer field, and in a hospital bed, and in the hall not so many minutes ago –</p>
<p>“It’s touched you too,” she said, and didn’t fully know what she herself meant by it.</p>
<p>Jim blinked himself back into whatever version of reality the rest of them were in. “What?”</p>
<p>“Like – like that shadow thing. Like when it had Will -” Joyce looked over at Will, whose frown was turning to realisation.</p>
<p>“They leave something behind,” Will agreed.</p>
<p>“What?” Jim repeated, and this time he sounded almost affronted. “Look, you all know I wasn’t ever <em>actually</em> dead.”</p>
<p>“No,” El said, with a long look at his face, putting her head to one side like she was trying to work out what she was seeing.</p>
<p>“No,” Joyce agreed, “but you <em>kissed -</em>”</p>
<p>Jim pushed himself abruptly to his feet, and Joyce had to run to catch him before he fell over <em>again</em>. Bob was already there, scrambling to his feet as well, and caught Jim by the arm as he staggered and nearly went over backwards. He caught Joyce’s eye as she took Jim’s other arm, and abruptly, she realised how – <em>silly</em> all of this was. They’d all narrowly cheated death again – some more narrowly than others – and here they were, tying themselves in knots over a kiss. A kiss that had probably saved them all.</p>
<p>“I <em>said</em>,” Jim complained, in a voice that was almost a whine, “we’d talk about that <em>later</em>.”</p>
<p>Joyce laughed. She couldn’t help it. And then she pushed herself up on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek, getting a mouthful of beard for her trouble. She reached over with her free hand, catching Bob’s hand in her own and giving it a squeeze.</p>
<p>“All right,” she said. “Later.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Later”, Jim really should know by now, did not mean “never”. No matter how much he wanted it to.</p>
<p>Joyce left him alone while he made sure El was all right, that she hadn’t pushed herself past her limit again, that whatever sucker-arm-thing had snuck past her guard hadn’t done any permanent damage. Joyce left him alone as they all made their way out into the hall, where Nancy was sitting with her back pressed against the wall, cradling a sobbing Barbara in her arms. Joyce left him alone as the Harrington kid’s BMW rolled into the drive, running to throw her arms around Jonathan almost before he’d made it out the passenger-side door.</p>
<p>But after Nancy came flying out of the house to yank both Jonathan and Steve into a huge hug, Joyce stepped back, and gave Jim a very pointed look as she took his hand.</p>
<p>“What is she -” Jim started, waving his free hand towards Nancy, who was now smothering…<em>both</em> Jonathan and Steve with kisses? “Thought she and Jonathan…?”</p>
<p>Joyce gave him a long, too-knowing look. “You are not getting out of talking about this.”</p>
<p>“No, I mean, look at them.”</p>
<p>Joyce did not look at them, and Jim gave up with a sigh. Wouldn’t be the first thing tonight he’d seen and she hadn’t.</p>
<p>“Fine,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing a hand down his face. “Inside?”</p>
<p>Going back into the house did not exactly offer the sanctuary he’d half-hoped for. Sure, it took the spit-swapping teens – shit, technically adults now, weren’t they? – out of the picture. But it also meant walking through the door and immediately coming face-to-face with the guy they were there to talk about.</p>
<p>Bob looked up as the door swung open. And so did Barbara, sitting beside him on the floor. Whatever they’d been talking about – probably something to do with being possessed by some kind of unimaginable horror with power over life and death – they stopped as soon as the door opened.</p>
<p>“Nancy - ?” Barbara started, and Joyce shot her a watery smile.</p>
<p>“I think they were just coming in behind us. She’ll be along in a minute, sweetheart.” Her smile turned into a worried frown, and she asked, “How are you feeling?”</p>
<p>Barbara exchanged a disbelieving look with Bob before turning it onto Joyce. “I should be asking you that. Apparently I tried to kill you.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, well, <em>apparently</em> you did a crappy job of it,” Jim interrupted, suddenly wanting Barbara out of the way so they could have this damn conversation and be done with it. “ ‘cause everybody’s still alive and well. You scared the hell outta Nancy, though, probably better go apologise.”</p>
<p>Barbara shook her head. “Nancy – she tried. But she took off the second she heard that car. I don’t think she’s ever going to be able to look at me the same way again.” She shuddered, pulling her cardigan closer around herself. “Dunno if <em>I’m</em> ever going to be able to look at me the same way again.”</p>
<p>“Course not. You turned into a monster and tried to eat the life out of her. <em>After</em> you came back from the dead. Kinda changes the way you look at somebody.” Barbara looked down at her hands, where she was grasping her knees, but Jim wasn’t finished. “Hey. Wasn’t your fault. Everybody knows that. And the first thing that girl did when she woke up was ask if <em>you</em> were okay. You’re gonna be all right.”</p>
<p>Barbara pulled her knees up to her chest, leaning forward to rest her chin on them.</p>
<p>Bob reached over to put a hand on her shoulder. “See? What did I tell you?”</p>
<p>Barbara looked up at his sympathetic smile for a long moment before asking, “It’s really not going to happen again?”</p>
<p>“It’s really not,” Bob echoed, giving her shoulder a pat before drawing his hand away. He sounded a whole hell of a lot surer about that than Jim felt, but this wasn’t the time or the place to get into that. “Go talk to Nancy.” He glanced up, and Jim couldn’t even start to guess at what the expression he was wearing meant. “There’s a conversation I’ve got to have, too.”</p>
<p>Barbara nodded, before unfolding her legs from under her chin and clambering awkwardly to her feet. She turned to the side a little to get by Jim and Joyce to the door, avoiding eye contact.</p>
<p>And then the three of them were alone.</p>
<p>“You sounded pretty sure when you told her it wasn’t going to happen again,” Jim said, as soon as the door shut behind Barbara. He knew Joyce was going to push it about the – <em>kiss</em>, but at least one of them had to keep their priorities straight.</p>
<p>Bob nodded. “It’s not. That – whatever it was, it’s gone.”</p>
<p>“Yeah? And how d’you know it’s not just making you say that?”</p>
<p>Joyce looked up at the light when it buzzed and guttered. But she didn’t react to the way the air went blue-dark and menacing all around Bob, the way his eyes punched out into twin black holes, the way all his edges seemed to go soft and dark and ever so slightly <em>wrong</em>, like they couldn’t quite remember the exact shape they were supposed to be. Or to the – the <em>other</em> changes. The ones that weren’t as easy to pin down. The ones that Jim just plain didn’t have words for.</p>
<p>He had to remind himself that she wasn’t <em>seeing</em> it. That she couldn’t see it. That he’d earned himself a lifetime membership in the Hawkins freaks and geeks club tonight.</p>
<p>Well. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been a card-carrying member for a while now. Annual renewals just got a hell of a lot easier, that was all.</p>
<p>And what the hell, maybe this could even be useful, next time some big otherworldly ugly came knocking. Maybe now they wouldn’t have to drag the kids into the thick of things to find out what was going on. That wouldn’t be so bad.</p>
<p>“You’re going to laugh,” Bob said, and Jim wondered if Joyce could hear the weird harmonics under it, either, or if it just sounded like his regular voice to her. “But I stood up to it.”</p>
<p>“You…what.”</p>
<p>Bob’s mouth quirked in a smile, and a little of the horror drained away. It was still hard to look right at him, but…it was also hard to get really scared of anything that smiled like that. “I mean – I don’t know what I mean. But I think…either it was going to eat me, or the other way around. And -” He shrugged. Those <em>eyes</em> left a faint dark smear in the air when he moved, like an afterimage printed on reality. “I didn’t let it eat me. And then <em>you</em> didn’t let it eat me.”</p>
<p>“Nothing horrifying about any of that at all,” Jim muttered to himself, shutting his eyes. It didn’t entirely help.</p>
<p>“And it’s…<em>gone</em>,” Joyce said, her voice rising question-like at the end like she didn’t dare say it as just a plain statement of fact.</p>
<p>“Whatever that was, that thing that wanted to kill people, steal the life out of them – yeah. Yeah. It’s gone.”</p>
<p>“Which doesn’t exactly explain why <em>you’re</em> still all -” Jim gestured with one hand. Bob blinked, and was abruptly normal and sweet as apple pie again. The light snapped back to its usual steady, warm glow.</p>
<p>“It <em>does</em>,” Bob said, sounding almost apologetic. “If you think about it.”</p>
<p>It kind of did, but Jim didn’t <em>want</em> to think about it. He had enough to take in and his head hurt enough already. It was times like this when he really missed having a little chemical help to make it through the day.</p>
<p>“So…it’s you, now? Keeping everybody who came back…back?” Joyce asked, and Bob nodded.</p>
<p>“Seems like it.” He looked down at his hands, his expression darkening, though it looked more sad than angry. “Not <em>everybody</em> who came back, though. Most of those folks down at the lab – I don’t think it thought they were useful enough for the energy they took up. Didn’t go home, didn’t get close to the living. Most of them got together instead to try to figure out what had happened and how it worked.” He looked up, and just the look in his eyes was as haunting as those black holes had been. “Somebody’s going to have to go out there and deal with a whole bunch of bodies.”</p>
<p>‘Somebody’, Jim decided, could probably be the chief of police. Which was not him anymore. The more he thought about it, the more perks he saw to being demoted. “So…energy. That mean you’re gonna have to go around eating people, now?”</p>
<p>“No.” Jim did not like the sound of the pause <em>at all</em>. “Not people. But…you might not have to worry about rats or raccoons or anything anymore.”</p>
<p>That, unfortunately, was probably the best they were going to get. Jim decided not to push it.</p>
<p>He knew he shouldn’t ask. Didn’t <em>want</em> to ask, when he was pretty sure he knew the answer already. But he couldn’t stop himself. “And – could <em>you</em> bring people back?”</p>
<p>Bob’s sad eyes just got sadder, and he shook his head once. <em>No.</em></p>
<p>Jim sucked in a long breath, straightening up and squaring his shoulders with a nod. It wasn’t a surprise. Still, fingers digging into an old bruise hurt whether you expected it to or not. “Too bad for the Hollands.”</p>
<p>He deliberately avoided meeting Joyce’s eyes.</p>
<p>After a moment, Joyce let out a huff, and leaned down, holding out a hand to Bob. “Come on. That floor can’t be comfortable. And I <em>do</em> have a couch.”</p>
<p>Bob hesitated, until Jim rolled his eyes and reached down too. Then he took one of their hands in each of his own, and let them help him up off the floor.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Of course, they couldn’t just sit down and talk without being interrupted.</p>
<p>First, by Jonathan and his friends – and wasn’t that a phrase that, Joyce realised guiltily, sounded strange in her own mind – trying to manoeuver an unconscious Heather Holloway through the front door. Jonathan held the door while Steve and Robin carried the girl in, nearly ramming her head into the doorframe as they tried to get by Jonathan in the hall, and there was some arguing and negotiating before they settled on laying her down on the couch.</p>
<p>Joyce got the story from Jonathan while Steve and Robin were busily bickering about something, some good-natured, casual argument that Joyce had the impression had been going on since before they’d got in the car to come here. Apparently Jonathan had barely hung up the phone after calling to say they were coming home when Heather had panicked, saying it wasn’t over and the thing that had killed her was still in her, that it was trying to get control, that they all had to get away before it got them too. Steve had had to knock her out with a table lamp.</p>
<p>From the sounds of things, they’d barely dodged the kind of scene that Joyce and Jim and Bob had come back to. Only none of them would have been able to see what would have become of Heather until it was too late.</p>
<p>Joyce had to just hold Jonathan for a long moment after that, until the reeling terror of how close she’d brushed up against losing him forever started to fade.</p>
<p>The second interruption came as they made their way into the kitchen, after helping Jonathan and his friends get settled all over the floor of the living room with sleeping bags and blankets. Nobody had asked, and Joyce hadn’t actually offered, but – they all seemed to have agreed, without discussion or argument, that no one was going home tonight.</p>
<p>She noticed, as she left the room, that even though Nancy Wheeler was sharing an unzipped sleeping bag as a blanket with Jonathan, the fingers of one of her hands were laced tightly through Barbara Holland’s in the sleeping bag beside them. So they were probably going to be all right.</p>
<p>Joyce had expected the younger two wouldn’t be able to shut off, to just go to sleep, not after the evening they’d just had. But she’d expected them to sit up in Will’s room crowded around the walkie-talkie, relating their adventure to a captivated audience. She had <em>not</em> expected them to come tiptoeing down the hall, like they were being very sneaky, and freeze at the sight of their parents.</p>
<p>“Kid, what…” Jim started. El shot him a wide-eyed, too-innocent look, and that was when someone at the back door gave an extraordinarily unconvincing owl hoot.</p>
<p>Joyce met Will’s eyes, and sighed, but she couldn’t help the smile. “Let them in,” she said. “But I hope you know you’re the one who’s going to have to raid the camping supplies for more blankets.”</p>
<p>She made him and El and the usual suspects – Max and Lucas and Dustin and, of course, Mike – all mugs of hot chocolate before shooing them off back down the hall. Hopefully that would keep them from any further interruptions. The kids went clattering off with their drinks and a cheerful, relieved buzz of conversation, retreating into Will’s room and slamming the door behind them.</p>
<p>Finally leaving Joyce and Jim and Bob alone.</p>
<p>This was what Joyce had wanted. But now that she had it, she wasn’t sure where or how to start. How did you ask the man you loved, the man you were dating, what it meant that he’d kissed the <em>other</em> man you loved, the one you might have been married to now if he hadn’t died, on the mouth to save all of you from a mind-invading, life-devouring horror? How could she even <em>start</em> to pick all of that apart? Especially when the man who’d <em>done</em> the kissing was acting like he wanted to pretend none of it had ever happened?</p>
<p>She could feel the tightrope twang and sway under her feet.</p>
<p>“Does anybody want – coffee, or hot chocolate, or – I think we’ve got some tea?” Joyce asked, chickening out. Both Jim and Bob agreed, a little too enthusiastically. Joyce had the feeling that they were both just as grateful as she was that someone had broken the awkward silence.</p>
<p>“Put on a pot of coffee, would you?” Jim asked, leaning back in the vinyl-backed kitchen chair as Joyce got up. “Don’t really feel like sleeping tonight.”</p>
<p>Bob gave a little shiver. “I’ll second that sentiment.”</p>
<p>“<em>Can</em> you even sleep anymore?”</p>
<p>“You’re asking me like I know.”</p>
<p>Joyce felt a smile start to settle on her face as she reached up into the cupboard for the Maxwell House tin and a filter. The tension seemed to have broken with the silence, and she could feel herself starting to relax. She desperately wanted a cigarette, and it’d be a while before she could stop starting at shadows – it always was – but for tonight, it all felt like victory.</p>
<p>They were going to be all right. She just had to hang onto that.</p>
<p>She started the coffeemaker and sat back down at the table, trying not to feel like a referee standing ringside. Jim was drumming his fingers restlessly against the table as he stared everywhere but at Bob’s face with a look that was just shy of a challenge. Bob, for his part, turned pleading eyes in Joyce’s direction, and she understood that, fair or not, it was going to be up to her to get this ball rolling.</p>
<p>“Okay,” she said, leaning forward to fold her arms on the table top, “Nobody’s dead, and nobody’s dying? And nobody’s going to try to eat anybody else?”</p>
<p>Jim shrugged. Bob shook his head no.</p>
<p>“Great. Then – Jim -”</p>
<p>“I’d do it again,” Jim blurted out, and Joyce gratefully surrendered the lead to him. “Nothing else was working. We needed a Hail Mary.”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Bob said, a little too quiet, more resigned than surprised. “A Hail Mary. Well, good for us it worked.”</p>
<p>It was always fifty-fifty, when Jim already had his back up, that saying you understood, you agreed, would get through or would just put him more on the defensive. Joyce had just started to figure that out. Bob hadn’t had a chance to.</p>
<p>“Look,” Jim started, in that low, reasonable tone that Joyce knew too well was very quickly going to rise to loud and <em>un</em>reasonable. “Way I see it, that little move is the reason we’re all here to talk about it. So if you – or <em>you -</em>”</p>
<p>“I didn’t say -” Joyce started, stung, but Jim just turned back to Bob and raised his voice to keep talking over her, relentless.</p>
<p>“Got a <em>problem</em> with it, then you can go crying to each other, because I don’t wanna hear it. I don’t care <em>what</em> it makes you think of me. Don’t even care you didn’t want it. We’re all here, all <em>safe</em>, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”</p>
<p>He broke off, staring Bob down like he was challenging Bob to blink first. Bob, on the other hand, looked about as stunned as he had when Jim had actually kissed him. Nobody said a word.</p>
<p>Joyce let her eyes sink shut, with a long sigh. She could feel the tightrope wobble furiously under her. God, she needed a smoke.</p>
<p>“’Didn’t want it’?” Bob’s voice said, finally, heavy with disbelief, and Joyce dared to peek. “’Didn’t want’ – Jim Hopper, are you honestly trying to tell me you have <em>no idea</em> what you’ve been doing to me for the past week?”</p>
<p>This time, it was Jim’s turn to look dumbfounded. “What <em>I’ve</em> been – hey, I was trying to be nice!”</p>
<p>Bob puffed out a little breath, shutting his eyes and giving his head a shake like he couldn’t believe his ears. Joyce wasn’t sure she could believe hers, either.</p>
<p>But there was nothing but sincerity in Bob’s voice when he asked, “Why did you <em>think</em> it helped bring me back?”</p>
<p>“I <em>thought</em>,” Jim grumbled, “that you were in love with <em>Joyce</em>.”</p>
<p>“Of course.” The smile Bob turned in Joyce’s direction, the way he said it, didn’t leave any room for doubt. “Of <em>course</em> I love Joyce.” He said it like he couldn’t imagine ever feeling any other way. Like in a world where monsters regularly ripped through into reality from another dimension and people sometimes came back from the dead, the only real impossibility would be <em>not</em> loving Joyce.</p>
<p>Joyce reached over and took his hand in both of hers, gripping it hard. Her smile felt dangerously close to becoming tears.</p>
<p>But Bob wasn’t finished. “But – you two were together. I mean – I’d <em>died</em>. There wasn’t any place left for me, and you seemed so happy together, I didn’t think she’d ever…I mean, I didn’t see any harm in just…daydreaming.” He swallowed hard, tugging at the collar of the soft flannel shirt that Joyce was suddenly <em>very</em> aware he’d borrowed from Jim’s old things. “I…might’ve let it get away from me a little.”</p>
<p>“What’s that supposed to mean, <em>let it get away from you a little</em>?”</p>
<p>“You didn’t help! You just had to be -” Bob seemed to struggle for the right word for a moment, and finally settled on, “<em>you</em>. I thought I had you figured. I thought you resented me for being back. That you were pissed that I was spending so much time with Joyce. And then you turned around and were so…<em>kind</em> to me.” He shook his head again. “In the most threatening way possible.”</p>
<p>“It was supposed to <em>be</em> a threat! You were supposed to be threatened! Not – whatever this is.”</p>
<p>Joyce shot Jim the best glare she could muster. He only shrugged.</p>
<p>“I know,” Bob sighed. “And I thought that had to be what you meant, until – until you <em>kissed</em> me.” He looked down at his and Joyce’s clasped hands with a sad smile before gently pulling his hand back, despite Joyce’s efforts to hold on. “But it sounds like I misread the situation. Pretty badly.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, well,” Jim said, dragging a hand down his face. “Guess I was the one who gave you the wrong end of the stick.”</p>
<p>Bob was still looking down at his hands, so he missed the long look Jim turned on him. But Joyce didn’t.</p>
<p>She looked back and forth between the two men sitting at the table with her, and felt a rush of helpless love well up to fill her. It was so easy, suddenly, to decide what she was going to do.</p>
<p>“Jim Hopper, for god’s sake,” she said, and Jim startled, like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “I swear sometimes it’s like you don’t <em>want</em> to be happy.”</p>
<p>“Hey,” Jim protested, weakly. “Don’t know what you’re -”</p>
<p>“You can kiss the man on the mouth, but you can’t tell him you – care about him? Like him? <em>Lo-</em>”</p>
<p>“<em>Joyce.</em>”</p>
<p>“Well, do you? Love him?”</p>
<p>Bob looked up, eyes darting back and forth between the two of them. The cautious, guarded hope in his expression was just too much for Joyce, and she reached out to take his hand again, leaning across the table to pin Jim’s right hand with her left.</p>
<p>“The hell kind of question’s that to ask the guy you’re dating?” The defensiveness faded from Jim’s voice and face as he caught Joyce’s gaze and held it, turning his hand over to hold hers. She could <em>see</em> him struggling with the sincerity of whatever he was about to say, could see the moment he steeled himself to say it anyway. “I – I know I can be bad at showing it. But I love you, Joyce Byers. I don’t want you to ever have to question that.”</p>
<p>Joyce couldn’t stop the smile. She gave Jim’s hand a firm squeeze, and he squeezed hers back, one of those reluctant smiles sneaking across his face. Joyce could still remember all too well how he’d once had such an easy smile. She didn’t <em>like</em> that life had made it so much harder to get it out of him, but – every time she did, it still felt like a victory every bit as important as beating whatever thing was threatening their entire world <em>this</em> time.</p>
<p>“I know,” she said. “I know. And I love you too. But that’s really not what I’m asking.”</p>
<p>Jim squinted at her in confusion. “You wanna know if I – if I <em>love</em> Bob Newby. Your ex. Another man.” He said it like he knew it was supposed to be absurd. But – maybe Joyce was only fooling herself, but it didn’t sound like <em>he</em> thought it was all that absurd. And the look he shot in Bob’s direction looked more scared – and maybe a little thoughtful – than anything.</p>
<p>“Yeah. That’s what I’m asking.”</p>
<p>Jim sighed, running his free hand through his hair, not meeting either of their eyes. “This is insane. Joyce, it’s you for me. Where’s this jealousy stuff coming from? Are you seriously going to make me choose between you and a guy I barely know? A guy I kissed once? <em>Once.</em> To save all of our lives, in case you forgot.”</p>
<p>“The idea,” Joyce said, carefully, “is that maybe <em>nobody</em> has to choose.”</p>
<p>In the silence that followed, she realised the coffeemaker had finished brewing. The only sound it made was the occasional drip splashing into the pot.</p>
<p>Bob shook his head, but he couldn’t hide the painful hope in his voice. “Joyce – it couldn’t possibly work. Jim doesn’t want -”</p>
<p>It might have been the single best thing he could have said. Jim bristled all over at what he obviously took as a challenge. “What, you think you know what I want?”</p>
<p>“I don’t think <em>you</em> even know what you want,” Bob said, a little wry, and Joyce watched with amazement as Jim puffed up even more.</p>
<p>“You think, huh. How about you get over here and I <em>show</em> you just how much I know what I want?”</p>
<p>Joyce shook her head, feeling a smile overtake her face. She was, she realised, inches away from bubbling over with laughter. But she didn’t want to risk stinging Jim’s pride, especially not <em>now</em>. Not when she was so close to getting everything she wanted.</p>
<p>“I’m pouring coffee,” she said, taking her hands back and pushing her chair out from the table, turning quickly towards the counter so that neither of the men could see her face. “Milk? Sugar?”</p>
<p>“Both,” Bob said, at the same time as Jim said, “Black.”</p>
<p>Joyce pulled down three mugs, and poured.</p>
<p>She wasn’t surprised, and only a little disappointed, when she turned back to the table with hands full of mugs and didn’t catch the other two with their hands on each other. But there was something – she couldn’t put her finger on it, but something in the atmosphere had shifted. Gotten…warmer, somehow. Easier.</p>
<p>And neither of them had shot her suggestion down yet.</p>
<p>It felt like a little miracle. Something impossible that was good instead of nightmarish, for once. Like the tightrope Joyce had felt herself walking had tied itself into a hammock and caught her when she fell.</p>
<p>With half a cup of coffee in her and a comforting warmth spreading all through her, she finally felt bold enough to ask. “So? Are we actually going to – are we really giving this a shot?”</p>
<p>“What, the three of us dating?” Bob shrugged, like laying it out plain hadn’t made it suddenly clear how it was absurd, silly, impossible. And – somehow, it hadn’t.</p>
<p>He met Joyce’s eyes with a smile that warmed her at least as much as the coffee had, before turning, with almost unbearably cautious hope, towards Jim. “I’d like that.”</p>
<p>Jim didn’t look up from his mug, and he didn’t say anything for long enough that Joyce started to feel nervous. When he did speak, though, all he said was, “Do you really think it could work? I mean – it’s not exactly normal.”</p>
<p>Joyce actually did laugh, at that. “Is <em>anything</em> about our lives normal anymore?”</p>
<p>From the grudging smile that drifted across Jim’s face, she figured he agreed.</p>
<p>“Besides,” Bob said, with a grin that was somehow knowing, “there really aren’t any guarantees. Any relationship might not work out. We’re not special there.”</p>
<p>From the flat look Jim gave him over his coffee, Joyce got the feeling Bob was parroting something Jim had said to him. She wondered when, and why.</p>
<p>“Guess I can’t argue with good advice,” Jim said, at last, and if he wasn’t exactly smiling then at least he looked more relaxed than Joyce had seen him in – months. “All right. I’m in.” He raised a hand. “But we are <em>not</em> saying anything to the kids until we know how – and if – this works.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They agreed not to take it back to the bedroom that night.</p>
<p>Which, all things considered, was the best choice. They were all so worn out after the day they’d had, whatever they might’ve gotten up to wouldn’t have lasted too long or been any too spectacular anyway. And a house packed to the gills with teenagers – all right, teenagers and <em>technically adults</em> – wasn’t the best place to try out anything new, important, and potentially embarrassing. It didn’t have to be that very night. They had time, now that nobody was a ticking time bomb or likely to drop dead without warning, to figure that kind of stuff out.</p>
<p>And Jim was still trying to wrap his head around the fact that everything hadn’t all blown up in his face. That instead, it had turned out better than he could possibly have imagined. That neither of the other two were upset or horrified or betrayed or wanted nothing to do with him.</p>
<p>They just…<em>wanted</em> him. And he wanted them both. And he could have them. Both.</p>
<p>Simple as that.</p>
<p>Honestly, it felt a little too good to be real. Life didn’t give Jim Hopper this kind of break. Life gave him good things for just long enough so he’d know what he was missing when it took them back. There <em>had</em> to be some kind of catch.</p>
<p>He downed two full cups of coffee before he worked up the courage to shift over and put a hand on Bob’s knee in the middle of some pointless conversation about – he didn’t even know, he’d been too busy worrying about doing this to pay any attention. It was stupid. Downright ridiculous. Jim had nearly died twice tonight. There was absolutely no good goddamn reason for this to be the scariest fuckin’ thing he’d done all night.</p>
<p>But reason or not, it <em>was</em>. And the rush of heady relief when Bob just broke into a smile and put a hand over his was almost dizzying.</p>
<p>“I hope this means it’s all right to do this, now,” Bob said, leaning forward.</p>
<p>So maybe there weren’t any fireworks or string quartets. But it had been a long, long time since Jim had expected swelling strings in the background. And he’d had more than enough fireworks for one lifetime.</p>
<p>It was just – <em>good</em>. There wasn’t a better way to describe it. Not that Jim had ever exactly been a poet. But – all the relief of surviving the night, of knowing everyone else was safe and gathered close, and that choking amazement of something they’d all thought lost forever coming back, of something he’d never expected could be within his reach suddenly being in his hands – all of that was part of it. Like letting go of a breath he’d been holding for way, way too long. All bundled up into one slightly stubbly, coffee-flavoured peck on the lips.</p>
<p>It didn’t stay just a peck on the lips for long, though. Although it <em>did</em> stay excruciatingly gentle. Not hesitant – Bob didn’t show so much as a flicker of uncertainty, and somehow that wasn’t a surprise. Anybody who’d wholeheartedly thrown their lot in with Joyce’s family’s weirdness the way Bob had had to be somebody who knew what he wanted and went for it.</p>
<p>It was just that Bob kissed him like he, Jim, was something breakable and precious. It was almost funny. Except that there was really nothing about it that made him want to laugh. And if Bob didn’t stop fucking – <em>slow-dancing</em> with his tongue, didn’t stop mapping out the inside of Jim’s mouth with all the methodical focus and patience he poured into puzzles and things that went beep – if he didn’t stop ever-so-slowly inching one warm, broad hand up Jim’s thigh and the other hand up the back of Jim’s neck, fingers tangling in Jim’s hair – like he could do this all night, like he <em>would</em> do this all night, like there was nowhere else in the world he wanted to be and nothing else he wanted to do and nobody else he wanted to touch – Jim was going to come the fuck <em>apart</em>.</p>
<p>He had to pull away, gasping for a breath, while he still had an ounce of self-control left. Joyce, damn her, chose that exact moment to lean over his shoulder, draping her arms around his neck as she craned her neck forward to steal a kiss from Bob. Jim couldn’t stop staring. She was beautiful. God, <em>they</em> were beautiful. And this was really not going to help him not end up coming in his pants like an overexcited teenager. He was really regretting, right about now, that agreement not to take things any further tonight.</p>
<p>It wasn’t the same, though, as the almost frantic magnetism, the damn near desperate way he and Joyce had gone at each other, when the buildup of years of unresolved frustration had finally sent them tumbling into bed together. Not that Jim didn’t <em>want</em>. He wanted very much. Especially now that he could finally admit to himself that he wanted to touch. Especially now that he <em>could </em>touch. And <em>especially </em>right now, when all his composure was shattered on the floor around him and Bob still barely looked a little ruffled (and maybe - a little blurry, though Joyce probably couldn’t see that) around the edges. That wasn’t gonna stand. Jim was going to get his hands all over Bob and absolutely <em>ruin</em> him.</p>
<p>But there was something about this that was…different. Not <em>easier</em>, exactly, but…</p>
<p>It felt like he had time.</p>
<p>Then, he’d been halfway frantic. And Joyce had only returned the feeling. They’d both been sure it was too good to last, both terrified of what might happen next, of how long they’d waited, of how close they’d come to never having this chance at all. Both trying to take everything they could get before it could be snatched away again. It had felt – it had felt like his ass was on fire, and if he took his hands off of Joyce he’d burn up into nothing.</p>
<p>This, though. This was a way slower burn. More of a low, spreading ember. It was warm, flaring hot, but it wasn’t - consuming. With Joyce’s slight weight pressed against his back and Bob practically sitting in his lap, Jim didn’t know if he’d ever felt so…<em>safe</em>. So grounded.</p>
<p>But also – for the first time in what felt like a long, long time, excited about, instead of dreading, what might be coming next. Whatever the catch was, whatever hell was coming their way next…none of them would be facing it alone.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” he said, as Joyce and Bob broke their lip-lock and turned near-identically mischievous smiles on him. He could hear how breathless he sounded, how ragged his own voice had gone around the edges. “Yeah, okay, I’m convinced. This could work.”</p>
<p>Joyce laughed, and kissed him, long and sweet and deep and lazy, like they had all the time in the world to do it again, to get it just right. God, he was never going to get tired of kissing her. Of seeing that brilliant smile.</p>
<p>She pulled away, only to whisper, right into his ear, “I love you.” And, even with the way she was looking at Bob, Jim couldn’t doubt she meant it.</p>
<p>“I love you too,” he said, and wasn’t sure which one of them he was talking to.</p>
<p>Bob’s grin lit up his whole face with purely innocent, purely evil glee. “I love you…two?”</p>
<p>Jim didn’t get it until Joyce groaned and leaned over to smack Bob lightly on the shoulder. “Think we’d better keep him from making any more puns,” she suggested to Jim, mock-seriously, wrinkling up her nose in a conspiratorial smirk.</p>
<p>“Think you’re absolutely right,” Jim agreed, matching her not-really-serious seriousness.</p>
<p>It still felt a little bit impossible, a little bit amazing, that he could just…lean forward and kiss Bob, just because he wanted to. But it was the kind of impossible that Jim thought he could enjoy getting used to.</p>
<p>Bob still tasted of coffee, mostly. And mouth. But somewhere under there, there was just the faintest hint of summer lightning.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>Two months later</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You can’t keep me out, Joyce. All I’m saying is, I got a right -”</p>
<p>“A right? A <em>right</em>!? No, Lonnie, what you <em>had</em> was a responsibility, and you’re the one who gave that up! You don’t get to just – just put us on a shelf, and take us down again when you feel like having a family! That’s not how this works!”</p>
<p>The front door opened behind Joyce, a sudden rush of air and heavy footsteps. At least the boys were out, at least <em>they</em> didn’t have to deal with this. She huffed out a frustrated breath and didn’t take her eyes off her ex-husband. She’d <em>told</em> the other two she’d handle this –</p>
<p>“Hey, baby.” Jim slung an arm around her waist, and Joyce barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes. The words were a joke, but his voice was deathly serious. “This jerk bothering you?”</p>
<p>Lonnie shook his head, his jaw working. “Oh, Joyce. New low,” he said, with a sharp-tipped smile.</p>
<p>Jim’s grip on Joyce’s waist tightened, pulling her closer against him, and Joyce could picture the narrowed eyes, the threatening half-smile he’d be wearing. “Hard to go lower than you, Byers.”</p>
<p>Joyce shut her eyes for the space of a steadying breath, then pulled free before the dick-measuring contest could turn into a fistfight. “Lonnie, I told you I didn’t want to see you here again. And the boys -”</p>
<p>“Are half mine.” Lonnie took a step forward. Maybe it was just the height he had on Joyce that made it seem threatening, but Joyce had the feeling he wasn’t trying any too hard <em>not</em> to make her feel threatened. “You’re gonna tell them they can’t see their father?”</p>
<p>Joyce planted her feet and stood her ground. “<em>You’re</em> the one who’s been telling them that! Three years, Lonnie! Three <em>years</em> and not one word out of you! Why turn up now? Jonathan <em>graduated</em>! Where were you then?”</p>
<p>“Not letting you see me here again. Guess I should’ve known better than to expect gratitude from you, but you could at least not put the blame on me for doing what <em>you</em> asked.” Lonnie took a step to the side, like he was going to go around Joyce to the door, only to stop when Jim stepped in front of him, arms crossed, a glowering wall. “Where is Jonathan, anyway? Wanna give him my congratulations.”</p>
<p>“Out. He doesn’t want to <em>see</em> you, Lonnie. If you actually cared, you could have <em>called</em>, sent a card -”</p>
<p>“Joyce? Everything all right?”</p>
<p>Joyce spun, to see Bob, looking worried, framed in the open door. The worry puckered into a little frown as he caught sight of Lonnie and Lonnie of him.</p>
<p>“Lonnie Byers,” Bob said, with impressive civility, a sharp contrast to the hard stare Jim hadn’t taken off Lonnie’s face. He held out a hand, and Lonnie took a step forward, grabbed it, and gave him a punch in the shoulder instead of shaking. Even from where she was standing, just knowing Lonnie, Joyce could tell it was much too hard to be friendly. Bob’s frown got deeper and Lonnie’s grin got wider and more self-satisfied as he stepped back.</p>
<p>“And <em>you</em> must be – actually, I have no idea who you are.” He nearly totally turned his back on Bob to look expectantly at Joyce, who crossed her arms and fixed him with the best scowl she could manage instead of answering.</p>
<p>“Bob Newby,” Bob said, a little overloud, apparently as aware as Joyce was that he was being deliberately ignored. “You don’t remember me?”</p>
<p>Lonnie gave an exaggerated shrug.</p>
<p>“Don’t play dumb, Lonnie,” Joyce said. “He went to high school with us.”</p>
<p>“Wait – the <em>Brain?</em>” Lonnie did a double take, giving Bob a long look. “Thought you died.”</p>
<p>“Something like that,” Bob said, after a moment, but Lonnie had already turned his attention back to Joyce.</p>
<p>“Is that why he’s here? You hosting a reunion?”</p>
<p>“He’s a <em>friend</em>.”</p>
<p>Lonnie turned to look back and forth between the three of them. Joyce felt the pit of her stomach sink at the understanding that crossed his face.</p>
<p>“Oh. It’s like that, is it? <em>Joyce</em>. You’re not doing too bad for yourself after all.” He gave Bob a dismissive glance. “Has he got money? It can’t be because of his rugged good looks.”</p>
<p>“Lonnie Byers, get the hell off my porch,” Joyce snapped. Lonnie was bigger and stronger than she was, and they both knew it, but he still took a half-step back under the force of her sudden fury before collecting himself, shaking his face back into a mockery of concern.</p>
<p>“You’re not even trying to deny it? Well. Jonathan might be an adult now, might be able to make his own decisions, but Will sure isn’t. And you know, I’m not so sure I want any son of mine growing up in this kind of <em>environment</em>.”</p>
<p>Joyce’s chest was filling with ice, sharp and cold, slicing her to ribbons from the inside out. She couldn’t bring herself to move to turn her head and look, but from the corner of her eye, she could see Jim shifting his weight, ready to throw a punch –</p>
<p>And then Lonnie’s eyes fixed on something over Joyce’s head, behind her, and all the colour drained out of his face.</p>
<p>He took a staggering step back, and then another two, the fake concern fading into a look of wide-eyed horror. He barely caught himself before walking backwards into one of the posts holding up the porch roof. “Jesus – Jesus, what -”</p>
<p>Joyce looked back over her shoulder, bitter dread starting to rise in the back of her throat –</p>
<p>But all she saw was Bob, standing in the doorway, with a mild, puzzled look fixed on Lonnie’s face.</p>
<p>“What’s the matter?” Jim asked, and even though his words were concerned, his voice was gloating. “Something wrong?”</p>
<p>“You don’t – look! <em>Look!</em> Jesus Christ, how can you not <em>see</em> that?”</p>
<p>“See what?” Jim glanced back behind him. He was obviously having trouble keeping the grin off his face. “Byers, you’re not – are you – <em>seeing</em> things?”</p>
<p>Lonnie gaped at him.</p>
<p>“Joyce,” he said, turning to her with pleading eyes.</p>
<p>For a moment, Joyce almost took pity on him. After all, she knew all too well what that felt like. To be trapped in a nightmare nobody else could see, that nobody else believed was even real. To wonder if you really were losing your grip. To wonder how you’d even know. <em>If</em> you would even know. If maybe everyone else was right.</p>
<p>But that thought just reminded her of the last time she’d seen Lonnie. Of what he’d <em>said</em> to her, of how he’d tried to use her. And any shred of pity she might’ve felt evaporated.</p>
<p>“Lonnie…you’re upset. You should really listen to yourself.” Joyce shrugged as dismissively as she could manage. “I mean, something nobody else can see? It sounds kind of…crazy.”</p>
<p>The fear on Lonnie’s face twisted into fury. “You goddamn bitch -”</p>
<p>He took one step towards Joyce, and then jumped back with a strangled shout. This time, he didn’t manage to catch himself before he hit the step, tripped, and landed hard in the drive on his ass. He didn’t stop, though, scrambling frantically backwards across the gravel on his heels and elbows until he collapsed flat onto his back, flailing in front of him at something Joyce couldn’t see. “Oh god, oh fuck, oh Jesus fucking Christ -”</p>
<p>“I think you should probably leave,” Bob said, and Joyce was surprised by how normal his voice sounded. A little tight with anger, maybe, but that was all. “And leave Joyce and her family alone.”</p>
<p>“Yes! Fine! Jesus, whatever you want, just – just get it <em>off</em> me -”</p>
<p>Lonnie bit off his own sentence, breathing hard, slowly lowering his arms. He seemed a little less frenzied, but no less terrified. And – Joyce was <em>sure</em> that, when he’d got there, the roots of his hair hadn’t been that pure, absolute white.</p>
<p>He didn’t say another word, just scrambled to his feet and ran for his car, throwing frightened glances back over his shoulder every few steps. Joyce watched him go in disbelief.</p>
<p>She waited until Lonnie had spun out of the drive in a squeal of gears and a shower of gravel before turning back to Bob. He was still wearing that mild, puzzled frown, but it quickly turned to guilt when he noticed Joyce was looking at him with wide eyes. “Sorry. I was just trying to spook him a little, I didn’t mean to hurt him. But he shouldn’t have threatened you like that.”</p>
<p>“<em>Sorry?</em> That was – incredible!”</p>
<p>“Think he pissed his pants?” Jim asked, sounding entirely too satisfied. “Hope he pissed his pants.”</p>
<p>Bob looked back and forth between them, guilt giving way to cautious hope. “So…that was okay?”</p>
<p>“<em>Okay?</em>” For once, Joyce found herself at a complete loss for words. Instead, she wrapped an arm around one of Bob’s and tucked herself into his side, pressing her other hand flat against his chest as she looked up into his eyes. She only broke eye contact to glance over at Jim as he drew up on their other side. “Bedroom?”</p>
<p>“Bedroom,” Jim agreed.</p>
<p>They were going to give poor Bob whiplash, with the way he was looking back and forth between the two of them. He seemed to be having a hard time finding words.</p>
<p>“You don’t have to say anything,” Jim offered helpfully. “Just nod and smile and help us with any tricky buttons or zips.”</p>
<p>“You…<em>liked</em> that.” There was naked disbelief in Bob’s voice. “You <em>liked</em> that I could’ve killed that -”</p>
<p>“- miserable self-satisfied scumbag?” Jim finished for him, pressing a kiss to Bob’s temple. “I dunno. Gonna have to think real hard about that one.”</p>
<p>Joyce didn’t entirely manage to choke off her laugh.</p>
<p>“I really could’ve killed him, Joyce,” Bob said, sounding worried, and Joyce gave him a pat, meeting his eyes again. She could hardly stand the way her heart swelled at the concern in his face. How she’d ever managed to find someone so kind, so perfectly and simply <em>good</em> –</p>
<p>“You didn’t,” she said, searching his face and hoping he’d understand, hoping it would be enough. “You wouldn’t.”</p>
<p>“But,” Jim added, “doesn’t hurt to see you <em>could</em>.”</p>
<p>Bob looked down at Joyce, who nodded her agreement. “He’s right. That was…really something. Really, <em>really</em> something.”</p>
<p>She breathed out a long, silent sigh of relief as a slow smile started to dawn over Bob’s face. “You two…actually <em>like</em> it when I’m a little scary?”</p>
<p>“Think that’s what we’ve been saying for the last five minutes,” Jim said. Joyce nodded again, with a little more enthusiasm.</p>
<p>Bob just looked at them for a moment with that disbelieving half-smile. Like he couldn’t believe his luck. Joyce knew the feeling.</p>
<p>And then he blinked, and when he opened his eyes again, they were black from corner to corner. “Okay. I can do scary.”</p>
<p>“Joyce,” Jim asked, conversationally, “just how attached are you to your mattress?”</p>
<p>“What? I – it’s a mattress, I don’t -” Joyce glanced at his face, and abruptly caught on. “I mean, it’s – it could probably stand to be replaced.”</p>
<p>“Good,” Jim said, without taking his eyes off Bob’s face. “Because I’m going to fuck him through it.”</p>
<p>There was absolutely nothing scary about the furious pink blush that bloomed all over Bob’s face. Joyce laughed, and leaned up to plant a kiss on his cheek, but he turned his head and caught her lips instead. She let her eyes sink shut, relaxing into the kiss, the shape of him warm and sturdy against her, supporting her. Sure, he could make her pulse pound and her heart race, but – she could never really be afraid of him.</p>
<p>When they broke apart, Bob was smiling. And his eyes were back to blue.</p>
<p>“You’re not very good at being scary,” Joyce teased.</p>
<p>“Well, then. Guess I need practice.” Bob put an arm around her waist, pulling her close as he turned back towards the door. “Lots and lots of practice.” His smile only grew wider as he looked over to catch Jim’s eye. “Know anybody who’d help me out with that?”</p>
<p>“Mm,” Joyce said, linking an arm through Jim’s and twining her fingers between his. “I think I can think of a couple.”</p>
<p>Jim gave her hand a squeeze, firm and steady, and she glanced up to see him smiling, like he didn’t have to think about it. Like he didn’t even realise he was doing it.</p>
<p>Joyce didn’t know how to put what she was feeling into words. Didn’t know how she was going to keep it all inside of herself.</p>
<p>And wasn’t sure why she was even trying.</p>
<p>She gripped Jim’s hand tight, pulling him closer. He let her lead him, without protest, let her drag him down for a kiss without losing that shadow of a smile.</p>
<p>Bob’s hand settled on Joyce’s hip, warm and promising, as he gently steered them back towards the house. “Don’t get me wrong, I could do this all day. But Joyce’s mattress isn’t going to ruin itself.”</p>
<p>Joyce gave a surprised laugh into Jim’s mouth.</p>
<p>He pulled back, making a face at her that still couldn’t totally hide the smile. “He’s right. Stop being irresistible for five minutes so we can take this inside.”</p>
<p>Joyce wrinkled up her nose at him as they made their way back inside.</p>
<p>The front door shut firmly behind the three of them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The dead of Hawkins settled slowly back into life.</p>
<p>Keith joked that he should be offering Heather Holloway a job, because she was at the video store more consistently than either of his actual employees. It had taken long enough, but Harrington’s appeal had apparently finally come through the way Buckley’d promised it would. Too bad that the babe he’d managed to summon was a zombie. Buckley was always super weird around her, too. Probably because of the whole undead thing. She hadn’t exactly been the most motivated of cashiers to begin with, but with Heather around she was downright useless.</p>
<p>The battered black Camaro with the California plates was seen leaving town, and then wasn’t seen again. But a few weeks later, the Mayfields got a collect call from some beach town out west with a woman’s name, Santa Maria or Santa Carla or something. Max’s mother accepted the charges. Max was out her bedroom window with her skateboard before her mother could ask if the caller wanted to talk to her.</p>
<p>Benny Hammond took the longest fishing trip of his first <em>or</em> second life. The niece who’d taken over the restaurant had offered him his old job as line cook back, but – dying had a way of putting what you thought you knew about yourself and what you wanted into perspective. He’d get his head settled back on his shoulders before he made any decisions. For now, he was content just to sit a while and watch the lake.</p>
<p>No one could know what Mews the cat thought, but Dustin Henderson would swear up and down that her purr, when she curled up in Claudia’s lap in the evenings, sounded somehow smug.</p>
<p>It was something of a surprise to Joyce when there was a knock on the door one afternoon and she opened it to find Barbara Holland, looking vaguely guilty. She was sorry to intrude, and she was <em>really</em> sorry about the whole…trying-to-kill-everyone thing, but Nancy – since that night, Nancy had barely given her a moment alone. Nancy was her best friend, and Nancy was trying so hard, but even best friends needed some <em>space</em> every now and then. And Nancy had had her own life, while Barb was busy being dead, and some of the things – okay, <em>most</em> of the things – that had changed for Nancy were still – well, for Barb? An adjustment.</p>
<p>Besides. Nancy didn’t know what it had been like. What it was <em>still</em> like sometimes. Nancy hadn’t been dead.</p>
<p>Joyce smiled, and invited Barbara in, and then went to find Bob.</p>
<p>It was tempting to eavesdrop. But Joyce managed to resist that temptation. And when Jonathan came home with both Steve and Nancy in tow, Barbara joined the three of them with a smile, and a good-natured eyeroll when Nancy plastered herself to her side.</p>
<p>Steve relinquished Nancy’s hand with a token protest and a suggestion that Barbara had missed out, that she should stick around the next time they got together with Robin and Heather, he really thought Barb and Heather might get along. It was casual enough that it took Joyce a moment to remember that Heather had been dead, too.</p>
<p>She wondered why she got the feeling that the suggestion was an olive branch. But, judging just by the thoughtful look Barbara gave Steve before agreeing, it seemed like maybe it had been accepted.</p>
<p>Joyce didn’t see any of them again until dinner. But there was a lot of very loud – and very…diverse – music, and a lot of laughing argument over whether the music was any good or not, from Jonathan’s room for what was left of the afternoon.</p>
<p>She wasn’t sure how she ended up playing host to all of Will’s friends for dinner, too. Apparently it had all been decided weeks ago and they were on some kind of rotation. Joyce wondered if Karen Wheeler knew what was headed her way.</p>
<p>She shanghaied the rabble into helping her and Bob put together sloppy joes and a potato salad, and set them to setting the table, letting their excited conversation wash over her. Dustin’s girlfriend was skipping a grade, and he was worried she’d be seduced by some high school senior with his own car and great hair. Lucas was moaning that he’d settle for being able to <em>drive</em> a car, he couldn’t wait for drivers’ ed. Max must be planning to try out for softball in the fall; she was trying (and, by the sounds of it, succeeding) to convince El it would be fun and hilarious to give her a little assistance hitting home runs from the bleachers. And Will was up in arms about some group that had plastered the library with fliers about his role-playing game – it wasn’t <em>Satanic</em>, and it <em>definitely</em> hadn’t raised the dead! The dead rising had been a completely unrelated coincidence!</p>
<p>Mike took the opportunity to offer, with a deliberately casual earnestness that Joyce thought sounded like he’d been overthinking this for quite a while, that there was this <em>other</em> game he and Lucas had heard about. One with a whole different play system that was supposed to be better for more advanced players, about digging up conspiracies involving otherworldly monsters, if they wanted to maybe try something new…?</p>
<p>Personally, Joyce thought it sounded a little too close to home to be any fun. Based on the way Bob leaned in and whispered, “I thought <em>Call of Cthulhu</em> was a horror game?”, he agreed. But Will seemed excited, so Joyce kept her thoughts to herself.</p>
<p>Jim got back from work in the middle of the chaos of dinner. He took one look at the invisible tug-of-war El and Bob were waging over the last bun, said, “Kid, quit playing with your food,” and snatched the bun out of the air where it was hovering. El stuck out her tongue as he turned his back to grab a plate and ladle filling onto the bun, and Max broke into a wheezing cackle.</p>
<p>Jim pretended not to notice. But when he went to sit down, he also pretended not to notice El already sitting in the chair he’d chosen. Her shriek quickly dissolved into giggles as she tried to push him off and he, apparently oblivious, stuffed bites of sloppy joe into his mouth and struck up a casual conversation with Bob about the weather.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, the kids all evaporated as soon as the food was gone and the dirty dishes were left piled up by the sink. Based on the yelling coming from the living room, there was going to be a minor war over who got to control the VCR. Jonathan lingered a moment, reaching for the dishtowel, but Joyce shooed him off into the living room with his friends. They were going to need him if they wanted to beat the younger set for their choice of movie.</p>
<p>She took a moment just to take a breath. The cheerful noise in the house was so much better than the awful quiet of last year. It meant that all her people were around her, together and whole and safe and <em>happy</em>. Joyce was trying hard to notice these moments when they came. To appreciate them while she had them, instead of letting herself get eaten up with the fear of when and how they might end.</p>
<p>But it was also good, sometimes, to hear the noise happening from another room, from inside of a little bubble of quiet and calm.</p>
<p>And the kids being out in the other room made for the perfect opportunity to steal a kiss. Or two. Or more.</p>
<p>It couldn’t last forever, of course. Not like this, all stolen kisses and honeymoon laughter and dancing in the kitchen. Eventually, they were going to have to figure out what to tell their kids – although Joyce had a sneaking suspicion that Jonathan, at least, already knew. Eventually, they were going to have to sit down and have a serious talk about what the future looked like for them. Eventually…eventually, they were going to have to get up and wash those damn dishes.</p>
<p>But for now…the kids and the future and the dishes could all take care of themselves for a little while longer.</p>
<p>And, at least until things got strange all over again –</p>
<p>Everything was all right.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Sorry, but I can't resist a good title drop. </p>
<p>From what I understand, it seems like, with a little homebrewing, you could actually play a season of Stranger Things as a campaign in Call of Cthulhu. Sounds like fun.</p>
<p>Comments are always welcome and appreciated! I would love to know what you think. You can also find me over on <a href="https://marypsue.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a>. </p>
<p>My most sincere apologies to the Hollands and to Tews the cat.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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